Behind the Scenes of My Trip to London and Dublin

During the negotiations in the 1990s to end decades of violence in Northern Ireland, Irish President Bertie Ahern would often field calls from U.S. Senators eager to receive updates on progress and learn how they could help keep the talks heading in the right direction. In particular, Ted Kennedy had the Irish President’s office on speed dial, and acted as a frequent interlocutor between the Unionist and Republican sides during the tense discussion that eventually led to the signing of the historic Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Back then, the Senate was a force in U.S. foreign policy. American Presidents still led the work of setting America’s place in the world, but Senators worked side by side with the executive branch in that work. Today, that’s not the case, and only a minority of members of the Senate are interested in playing an active role in American diplomacy.

That’s a shame, because there is only so much ground that a President or a Secretary of State can cover. A Senate that’s active in foreign policy is a force multiplier when it comes to advancing U.S. security interests around the world. The Good Friday Agreement would not have been possible without Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, and many other Senators who supplemented the work of the Clinton Administration and its mediator in Belfast, former Senator George Mitchell.

I know I can’t replace the kind of foreign policy gravitas that someone like Ted Kennedy possessed, but I’ve made it a priority to represent the U.S. abroad because I am confident our nation is safer if some U.S. Senators, like me, provide added value to the work of the Administration. I think this is particularly the case – to this day – in Ireland and Northern Ireland, where the peace achieved by the 1998 agreement is still fragile. That’s why I worked hard to organize a major bipartisan, bicameral (meaning Republicans and Democrats from both the House and Senate) trip to Ireland last weekend, and I want to tell you why it was important.

The genesis of the trip dates back to late last year, when my friend, former Irish Senate President Mark Daly came to pitch me on attending a major inter-parliamentary meeting he was organizing for August 2023. For years, the indefatigable Daly has been working to create an organization of state legislators dedicated to supporting U.S.-Ireland friendship. He chose the weekend of August 25, 2023 – the date of a major U.S. college football game in Ireland (Navy-Notre Dame) – to convene his group in Dublin.

I have been very supportive of this effort. There are so many reasons why it’s important to keep strong support in the United States for Ireland and the peace process. First, the U.S.-Ireland economic relationship is unusually strong – Ireland is a small country but is the 7^th largest investor in the U.S. On the plane over to Dublin, my Republican co-lead on the trip, Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska, tugged my sleeve to ask if it was a typo that there is $1 trillion in bilateral trade between our two countries. Our economic relationship is a big deal.

But of course, people, culture and politics bind us more closely. I’m a proud Irish-American, and I represent a large, vibrant Irish-American community in Connecticut. They want me to stay very involved in U.S.-Ireland work. And the Good Friday Agreement is still a working document. The departure of Britain from the European Union created big problems for certain provisions of the Agreement, in part because it threatened to re-establish a physical barrier between the Republic of Ireland (still in the EU) and Northern Ireland (now outside the EU). I’ve been working for the last few years with American, Irish, British, and European officials to negotiate a deal to avoid this nightmare situation, because very little has happened in the Northern Ireland peace process without active involvement from the U.S..

The first stop on our trip was London. We flew all day Wednesday and landed there late that night. On Thursday, we met with officials from the Defense Ministry, the Foreign Ministry, and the national security advisors to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. I was there to send one message, in particular. There is a bill making its way through the British Parliament that would effectively grant immunity to those who committed political crimes during the period of Northern Ireland violence. No community in Northern Ireland – not the Unionists nor the Republicans – support this bill, and it threatens to upset peace. I was joined in my concern by Republican Congressman Michael Lawler of New York. I was glad he joined the trip because he’s perhaps the most knowledgeable Republican in the House on Northern Ireland issues and it’s important to keep our work on these issues bipartisan.

On Thursday night, we took the short flight to Dublin, and there we were joined by another congressional delegation – this one made up entirely of House members – for our Dublin meetings. Most of our delegation – nine members including two other Senators besides Sullivan, Oklahoma Republican Markwayne Mullin and Delaware Democrat Chris Coons – went to hotel when we got in, but Sullivan and I represented our delegation at a small dinner party that night of key Irish and American political and business leaders in town for the conference and game. My role was to have a small, moderated talk with the Irish Trade Minister, Simon Coveney, after dinner. Jetlagged, I hoped that our talk would begin within an hour or two of sitting down for the first course. But four hours later, the talk around the tables was so lively that our formal presentation hadn’t begun. I was exhausted (the event eventually ended just short of midnight), but glad to be back in the company of my legendary verbose and chatty Irish brethren.

Joined together, we made up nearly 20 members of the House and Senate. This is one of the biggest bipartisan delegations to be in Dublin for years, and I was so pleased to have helped deliver this critical sign of support for the U.S.-Irish relationship. On Friday, we had a long, formal diplomatic lunch with the Irish Foreign Minister, my friend Micheál Martin. We discussed the importance of stopping or amending the immunity bill, and we quizzed him about ways to keep improving our economic and trade ties. In the afternoon, we headed to Daly’s inter-parliamentary meeting, billed as the largest meeting of its kind ever between American and Irish policymakers.

The leaders of the U.S. congressional delegation were asked to make remarks, and as the leader of the group, I went first. I was happy with my remarks, which ran about 4 minutes and talked about how our two nations’ friendship was rooted in the power of revolutionary ideas (American self-governance and Irish nationhood). I got a robust, polite applause. Sullivan was next, and he proceeded to announce that the best way for an American politician to show deference to his Irish guests was to be brief, so his speech was a total of four well thought-out sentences. He sat down to thunderous applause, the Irish having never heard a U.S. politician be so succinct. I leaned over to my good friend Dan and said, “I feel like I was your set-up man!”

On Saturday, our delegation made its way to the Navy-Notre Dame game. Organizers claimed that the 40,000 Americans in Dublin for the game was the largest ever one-time peacetime movement of Americans to Europe in history. Notre Dame dominated (I was rooting for Navy), but the game helped cement the important bond between our two nations, and I was glad to be there.

My family didn’t make a big deal about our Irish roots growing up (it was the Polish side of my family – my mother’s family – that was much more connected to its ethnic roots). My Irish immigrant ancestors made a priority of assimilation, and I respect their choice. But it’s made a little more work for me to reconnect with my past. Leading the Senate’s efforts on promoting the U.S.-Ireland relationship is one way I do that. I’m confident this trip advanced the work of peace in Northern Ireland and greater cooperation between the U.S. and Ireland.