US President Donald Trump said on Saturday he would "love" to see British-run Northern Ireland unify with Ireland, remarks made during a visit to Dublin that drew a sharp response from pro-British unionists in Northern Ireland.
Trump's comments come weeks after new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said a referendum on Northern Ireland leaving the United Kingdom was "off the table", a position Downing Street on Saturday said remained unchanged.
"Well, I don't want to cause any problems, but I will tell you, I'd love to see it unified," Trump told reporters sitting next to Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin after the pair met in Dublin. "It's going to happen eventually ... I think it would be a fantastic thing."
"Now the UK will have something to say about it ... but I think it would be a great thing," he added.
Trump later said that there "was no good answer" to the question on Irish unity but repeated that he thought it would be "a very cool thing".
Under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, a referendum can be held only at the discretion of the British government. The accord ended three decades of violence between Irish nationalists seeking a united Ireland and unionists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK.
While polls show a comfortable majority in Northern Ireland favour remaining in the UK, the gap has narrowed slightly since Britain's departure from the European Union pushed unity higher up the political agenda.
The leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, Northern Ireland's largest party advocating continued union with Britain, rejected Trump's prediction, saying unification with Ireland would lead to "the destruction of our country."
"Northern Ireland's constitutional future will be decided by the people of Northern Ireland, not by commentary in London, Dublin or Washington," Gavin Robinson, who has publicly supported Trump in the past, wrote on X.
In Belfast, supporters of Irish unity gave a guarded response.
"I think it's just headline grabbing ... I don't think he gives a toss whether there is a United Ireland or not," said Eamon Hanna, a supporter of the nationalist SDLP party, which has been a strong critic of Trump's policies.
Previous US presidents, including those with strong Irish heritage like Joe Biden, have been careful to remain neutral on Irish unification. The US government played a key role in brokering the 1998 peace deal.
Trump also met Irish President Catherine Connolly, who had joined a protest against his 2019 visit to Ireland, before she was elected to the mostly ceremonial role last year.
Connolly, formerly a long-time left-wing lawmaker, said in a statement that she conveyed to Trump "the strong view of the Irish people that the normalisation of war and genocide can never be accepted."
Her statement did not reference any conflict, but she has been previously critical of the US war with Iran and Israel's assault on Gaza, which Ireland, in common with a UN inquiry and several human rights groups, has described as a genocide.
Israel rejects that characterisation, saying that it is fighting the militants who attacked it from the Palestinian enclave in 2023.
Thousands of protesters, some holding posters calling Trump a warmonger and chanting "Free free Palestine", marched through central Dublin shortly after Trump left to watch a golf tournament at one of his resorts in the west of Ireland.
It was one of the country's largest anti-war protests in recent years.
The centrist premier Martin had earlier focused his remarks on the countries' close economic ties. US-owned companies, mainly in the technology and pharmaceutical sectors, employ about 10 per cent of workers in Ireland after successive governments prioritised the companies' jobs and tax revenues over decades.
"You took all our medical companies, we've got to get a couple of them back," Trump said. "You fleeced us but that's okay ... There's a lot of room to go around and our relationship with you is fantastic." — Reuters
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