Key events
As Biden’s visit to Northern Ireland approaches, security has been stepped up with manhole covers near the president’s hotel in Belfast being lifted as part of checks.
When the president touches down tonight it will come less than 48 hours after police were attacked with petrol bombs in Derry on Easter Monday during a dissident protest linked to commemorating the Easter Rising of 1916.
Last night the police’s area commander for Derry City and Strabane, Ch Supt Nigel Goddard, called the attack “incredibly disheartening”. There were no injuries.
In a report carried by the Derry Journal, he said: “Shortly after the parade commenced, petrol bombs and other objects were thrown at one of our vehicles at the junction of Iniscarn Road and Linsfort Drive. This was a senseless and reckless attack on our officers who were in attendance in the area in order to comply with our legal duties.
“As participants at the parade made their way out of the City Cemetery, they removed their paramilitary uniforms under the cover of umbrellas and burnt them.
“Organisers of this parade communicated in advance their desire to have a respectful and dignified event, however, that is not what we witnessed today. There can be no place for this type of criminal activity. It is not wanted nor welcomed by the vast majority of people across the city.”
White House reveals Biden visit itinerary
Lisa O’Carroll
The US president will be greeted by the prime minister when he touches down in Belfast tonight at 9.30pm with a bilateral meeting between the two leaders scheduled for Wednesday morning, the White House has confirmed.
The public aspect of his four day trip to Northern Ireland and Ireland will kick off with a speech at Ulster University at lunchtime on Wednesday “marking the tremendous progress” made since the 1998 Good Friday agreement.
An announcement on potential American investment is also expected.
“He’ll underscore the readiness of the United States’ to preserve those gains and support Northern Ireland’s vast economic potential to the benefit of all communities,” his national security council co-ordinator for strategic communications, John Kirby, last night in Washington.
Manholes were being lifted in Belfast city centre in final security sweeps around the city centre hotel Biden will stay with 300 extra police drafted in to help the operation which one police officer last night said “is the same if he stayed two hours or two weeks”.
Biden will then fly to the Republic of Ireland for the main leg of his four-day visit to celebrate his and America’s ancestral ties with the country.
He is expected to fly to Dublin at about 2.30pm and then be flown in a helicopter to the border town of Carlingford where his great-grandfather James Finnegan was born to meet extended family and visit a 13th-century castle.
The president will then return to Dublin for an address to the Dáil making Biden the fourth US president to do so, following John F Kennedy’s appearance in 1963, Ronald Reagan’s in 1984 and Bill Clinton’s in 1995.
With his eye firmly on the Irish American vote, his spokesman noted: “Today one in 10 Americans claim Irish ancestry and Irish Americans are proudly represented in every facet of American life.”
Biden will be feted at a banquet in Dublin Castle on Thursday night before travelling to Mayo – a county that suffered huge depopulation through death and emigration during the Irish famine – with a visit to the North Mayo Heritage and Genealogical Centre’s Family History Research Unit followed by remarks outside St Muredach’s Cathedral on Friday in Ballina.
This connects him with his own family as his great-great-great-grandfather Edward Blewitt sold 27,000 bricks to the church in 1827, says Kirby.
Good morning from London.
Joe Biden will arrive in Northern Ireland tonight to begin a four-day visit to the island of Ireland.
He will land in Belfast on Tuesday evening and arrive in the city to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement.
Rishi Sunak will meet him off the plane, and the president will then meet Northern Irish politicians who are without a sitting assembly after Stormont was suspended in February 2022.
It is thought he will encourage them to reconvene the assembly, with the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) currently refusing to return over a dispute about post-Brexit trading.
He will give a speech at Ulster university on Wednesday, before travelling to the Republic of Ireland where he will stay until Friday.
Meanwhile, the Times and Telegraph have reported overnight that Sunak will call a general election in autumn 2024, hoping to benefit from a projected fall in inflation and rise in wages.
The Times reported that ministers were being advised that the living wage should rise by 74p an hour to £11.16, and inflation could be as low as 2%.
Income tax could also be cut in the autumn statement, which would come into effect in April.
A four-day junior doctors’ strike begins today – and Kevin Rawlinson will bring updates here.
I’m sitting in for Andy Sparrow today. Comments are open below the line, or if you want to get in touch with me with any tips or information – my email is [email protected] or on Twitter where I’m @HarryTaylr.
