Catherine Connolly making special visit hours after meeting Donald Trump
It will be one of the President’s first big appearances locally since she was elected
Just hours after meeting US President Donald Trump in Dublin, Catherine Connolly will be heading west to pay homage to something much closer to home.
The Irish President will attend a memorial on Sunday in Bohermore Cemetery for the women and girls who died inside Galway’s Magdalene Laundries.
It will be one of the President’s first big appearances in the west since she was elected in a day that will honour the 1,663 deaths that occurred in these Laundries across Ireland from 1765 until the last one was closed in 1996.
It is estimated that over 30,000 females were housed by religious orders in the 200 plus years they were in operation.
The first Galway Laundry was opened on Lombard Street in the early 1800s before moving to Forster Street in 1870 and subsequently being shut down and demolished to make way for housing in 1991.
The US President will visit Áras an Uachtaráin to meet the Irish President as part of a ‘brief courtesy visit’ while he is in Ireland.
It is understood that Trump will fly into Dublin Airport after attending the 25 year commemoration of 9/11 in New York.
The US President is scheduled to travel here from September 12 to 14 spending time at his International Golf Resort in Doonbeg, where the Irish Open is taking place, as well as attending a ceremony for the new US embassy in Ballsbridge.
During a fourth of July message to the American people, Trump said: “There's nothing better than Irish-American friendship and I have a beautiful place over there. It's one of the best, most beautiful golf courses anywhere in the world.”
But the friendship between Connolly and Trump has been rocky with several jabs going back and forth including a rude insult from the US President back in March.
Connolly has been heavily critical of the US foreign policy under Trump and said around St Patrick’s Day, before the annual Taoiseach-US President meeting, that “the normalization of war can never be accepted.”
In another statement marking International Women’s Day, the President said: “What we have witnessed in recent days in the Middle East, and beyond, are not political disputes."
"They are deliberate assaults on international law, the international laws that have underpinned global peace for 80 years.
“We must name them as such, without euphemism and without equivocation.”
She has also previously described Trump as “volatile, unpredictable, acting like a bully [and] bringing inn tariffs when it suits him”.
Trump responded to these remarks during the annual St Patrick’s visit and appeared to misgender Connolly in his reply.
Referencing Connolly’s comments surrounding the situation in Iran, Trump said: “Look, he's lucky I exist.”
Trump last visited Ireland in 2019.