UK presidential visit - Looking to the future, not the past

It is, in a way, an absurdity that two neighbouring island nations should have to engage in tortuous planning and negotiations and no small amount of soul searching simply to organise a state visit.

That is the sad reality of the troubled and shared history of Ireland and Britain. Almost 800 years of enmity, repression and rebellion, a war of independence followed by economic isolation, and 30 years of conflict in the North have taken their toll.

Yet all that weight of history makes the announcement of a state visit of President Higgins to the UK all the more welcome.