Pere Aragonès travels to Dublin this Thursday to meet former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and on Friday with Sinn Féin leaders Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill. The first is the party president since February 2018, when she replaced Gerry Adams. She is also head of the opposition after achieving in 2020 to be the most voted force in the Republic of Ireland. O’Neill is vice-president and leader of the formation in Northern Ireland, where she also won the elections in 2022, although unionist parties prevented her from becoming prime minister’s daughter-in-law by blocking Northern Irish institutions.
For his part, Ahern was Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland between 1997 and 2008. He was one of the architects of the Good Friday peace agreement in Ulster. An agreement that marks the 25th anniversary and that he starred in together with, among others, Tony Blair, British Prime Minister at the time, and Gerry Adams. Ahern collaborated with the peace process in the Basque Country.
The Government highlights that this trip, unlike those made recently by the President of the Generalitat and of clear institutional significance, has a more political aspect. This is how it differs from other appointments, such as the one in which Aragonès managed to recover a certain normality with the highest European authorities, when meeting at the Palau de la Generalitat with the vice president of the European Commission (EC) Margaritis Schinas. It was in July. In October he traveled to Brussels to meet with two European commissioners, Didier Reynders for Justice, and Thierry Breton for the Internal Market.
The head of the Government will be accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Action, Meritxell Serret. With this trip, the Catalan Executive intends to strengthen ties with Sinn Féin, which, once abandoned its role as the political arm of the IRA, has achieved historic electoral results, both in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland.
Aragonès will complete his visit with a meeting, also in Dublin, with the organization Conradh na Gaeilgem, founded in 1893 and which works to defend and promote the Irish language. On January 1, 2022, under his leadership, Irish became an official language in the European Union.