DUBLIN — Sinn Féin has set the stage for a potentially fractious St. Patrick’s Day in the White House by announcing it’s boycotting events involving Donald Trump.
The move by Ireland’s main opposition party, though dismissed as an attention-seeking stunt by Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, reflects deep-seated Irish antipathy to the United States president’s latest ideas on clearing the Gaza Strip of Palestinians.
Ireland, along with Norway and Spain, last year recognized Palestinian statehood and is openly reviled by Israel.
Martin still hopes to be invited to the White House for annual events including the ceremonial handover of a bowl of shamrock, a decades-old tradition maintained throughout Trump’s first term.
Ireland’s government normally treats the Irish national holiday on March 17 as its best chance to promote Irish interests in dozens of countries, most crucially the United States. It’s been at least as important for Sinn Féin, as it is usually a focal point for talks in the White House and on Capitol Hill.
But the joint announcement by Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald and the party’s first minister atop the Northern Ireland government, Michelle O’Neill, highlights how the usual diplomatic rule book could be torn up this time — and invites retaliation from hair-trigger Trump.
“I, like many other Irish people, have listened in horror to calls from the president of the United States for the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homes and the permanent seizure of Palestinian land,” said McDonald, whose party is closely allied to the Palestinian cause from the days when Sinn Féin represented the public face of the outlawed Irish Republican Army.
She and O’Neill said they intended to meet other American leaders, particularly Irish-Americans who have offered strong backing to Sinn Féin since the 1990s, when then-President Bill Clinton’s efforts to bring it in from the diplomatic cold encouraged IRA cease-fires.
Sinn Féin leaders have since attended every St. Patrick’s Day White House celebration — except in 2005, when the Republican administration of George W. Bush banned the party in punishment for IRA cease-fire violations.
“People rightly look to leaders to stand against injustice,” O’Neill said in justifying her decision to avoid any White House events this year.
“And in the future, when our children and our grandchildren ask us what we did while the Palestinian people endured unimaginable suffering, I will say I stood firmly on the side of humanity.”
Name recognition
O’Neill’s boycott could present a rare diplomatic opening for Northern Ireland’s main pro-British party, the Democratic Unionists (DUP), which typically turns out as the odd Union Jack-waving ducks on an otherwise green St. Patrick’s Day.
O’Neill’s DUP co-leader of Northern Ireland’s cross-community government, Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly, still expects to attend the White House event.
Government leaders in Dublin chided Sinn Féin’s snub as reckless and foolish given widely held fears that Trump intends soon to target the Republic of Ireland, with its Europe-leading cluster of nearly 1,000 U.S. multinationals.
Trump’s new Treasury and Commerce secretaries, Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick, already have singled out Ireland as a country where low-tax policies have lured in too much U.S. business. That includes most of America’s top drugmakers, whose exports to the U.S. fuel a lopsided trade surplus for Ireland.
Although Sinn Féin is not part of Martin’s coalition government, it is the only Irish political party with substantial name recognition in the United States. Likewise, Sinn Féin is the only Irish party that actively raises funds in the U.S. via its American arm.
McDonald maintained warm relations with Joe Biden despite his Democratic administration’s ardent support for Israel, reflecting Biden’s exceptional personal ties with Ireland — which he has visited several times, including a four-day official visit as president in 2023.
Trump, by contrast, has limited his visits to the golf resort he owns on Ireland’s Atlantic coast.
Martin — the ultra-diplomatic political veteran who took the reins of a new coalition government last month — dismissed Sinn Féin’s anti-Trump move as cynical opposition posturing.
He said it was critical for European governments to engage positively with the Trump administration, particularly Ireland, which receives unique access to the White House each March 17 — unless Trump, this time, chooses to withdraw the welcome mat.
“Sinn Féin does what it always does,” Martin told reporters shortly after McDonald’s announcement. “I have a responsibility to the country.”
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