US President Donald Trump said he would “love” to see British-run Northern Ireland unify with Ireland, comments that immediately drew criticism from pro-British unionists during his visit to Dublin.
Trump made the remarks on Saturday after meeting Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin in Dublin, where he said he believed Irish unity would eventually happen and described it as a “fantastic thing”.
“Well, I don’t want to cause any problems, but I will tell you, I’d love to see it unified,” Trump told reporters alongside Martin.
“It’s going to happen eventually … I think it would be a fantastic thing.”
Trump acknowledged that the United Kingdom would have a say in the matter but added that he believed unification would be “a great thing”.
His comments came weeks after new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said a referendum on Northern Ireland leaving the UK was “off the table”. Downing Street said on Saturday that its position on Irish unity remained unchanged.
Trump later acknowledged there was “no good answer” to the question of Irish unity but again said he thought it would be “a very cool thing”.
Under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, a referendum on Northern Ireland’s constitutional status can be called at the discretion of the British government. The agreement brought an end to three decades of violence between Irish nationalists seeking a united Ireland and unionists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK.
While opinion polls continue to show a comfortable majority in Northern Ireland favouring remaining in the UK, the gap has narrowed somewhat since Britain’s departure from the European Union pushed the question of Irish unity higher up the political agenda.
Gavin Robinson, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Northern Ireland’s largest party advocating continued union with Britain, rejected Trump’s prediction.
He said unification with Ireland would result in “the destruction of our country”.
“Northern Ireland’s constitutional future will be decided by the people of Northern Ireland, not by commentary in London, Dublin or Washington,” Robinson, who has previously supported Trump, wrote on X.
Supporters of Irish unity in Belfast were more cautious about Trump’s comments.
Eamon Hanna, a supporter of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), dismissed the remarks as “headline grabbing”, saying he did not believe Trump genuinely cared whether Ireland became united.
Previous US presidents, including Joe Biden, who has strong Irish heritage, have generally maintained a neutral position on the question of Irish unification. The US government played a key role in brokering the 1998 peace agreement.
During his Dublin visit, Trump also met Irish President Catherine Connolly, who had protested against his 2019 visit to Ireland before being elected to the largely ceremonial presidency last year.
Connolly said she told Trump that the Irish people strongly believed the “normalisation of war and genocide can never be accepted”.
Her statement did not name any specific conflict, although she has previously criticised the US war with Iran and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which Ireland, a UN inquiry and several human rights groups have described as genocide. Israel rejects that characterisation, saying it is fighting militants who attacked the country from Gaza in 2023.
Thousands of protesters later marched through central Dublin after Trump left to attend a golf tournament at one of his resorts in western Ireland.
Some carried posters branding Trump a warmonger and chanted “Free free Palestine”, in what was described as one of Ireland’s largest anti-war demonstrations in recent years.
Martin, meanwhile, focused on the strong economic ties between Ireland and the US, with US-owned technology and pharmaceutical companies employing about 10% of Ireland’s workforce following decades of government efforts to attract investment and jobs.
Trump joked about the close economic relationship, telling Martin: “You took all our medical companies, we’ve got to get a couple of them back.”
“You fleeced us but that’s okay … There’s a lot of room to go around and our relationship with you is fantastic,” he added.
