Queen Elizabeth II of England has accepted an invitation from President McAleese to visit Ireland later this Spring,
Buckingham Palace in a statement confirmed: “The Queen has been pleased to accept an invitation from the President of Ireland to pay a state visit to Ireland this year. The Queen will be accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh.”
A date for the visit has not been released but it is widely expected to be in May.
The Queen will be following in the footsteps of her grandfather George V, who came here in 1911, before independence.
In a statement, the office of President Mary McAleese said the timing of the visit would be confirmed at a later date.
“President McAleese is pleased to announce that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has accepted an invitation to visit Ireland this year,” it said.
“The dates of the visit and the programme will be announced jointly by Aras an Uachtarain and Buckingham Palace in due course.”
SDLP Leader Margaret Ritchie said:
“I very much welcome the fact that President McAleese has issued, and that the Queen has accepted, an invitation to make an official visit to Ireland this year.
“While this event is certainly historic in its own right, it is, just like the English rugby team playing in Croke Park, another sign of the positive maturity and closeness of Anglo-Irish relations in recent times.
“Both the Queen and the President have played no small part in signalling an end to old enmities and a blossoming of an excellent new relationship between Britain and Ireland.
“I am sure the Queen will be given a very warm Irish welcome and I hope that even those who historically take issue with the British monarchy will show a new spirit of generosity and maturity that shows our country really is moving on.”
These idiots who say the queen is not welcome would go out on the weekend to there local pubs and put on man utd arsenal Chelsea jerseys. These fools should just be ignored because they haven’t a clue. The queen is welcome here because most people in ireland have moved on and forgot the past I hope that our two countries will live in peace from now on
It is time to move on. Our problems at present are not being created by the Queen. We cannot live in the past. I do not hear anyone not welcoming Germany to Ireland or Merkle becasue of the Nazis in WW2. There are so many millions of Irish in the UK mainland, revenue from her visit wil create jobs in Ireland and blaming this elderly woman and everything she represents gives ammunition to the morons who shoot a Catholic GAA member in Omagh who was a member of the PSNI – on behlf of the Irish. Nonsense Nonsense Nonsense
The Queen is not welcome at all! I haven’t spoke to one person in my local areas that wants this visit! It s a disgrace to spend money on this visit when our country is in such an economic crisis. It is an insult to the Irish people to have her visit when her family carried out such atrocities against us, and till this day we are still occupied by british forces in the north. The Queen is NOT WELCOME!
She is really not welcome and she know’s it…She is using Barack Obama as cover for a highly dangerous visit…