VISIT PROTOCOL:THE VISIT of US president Barack Obama is unlikely to last for more than a day and a half and will take place about the time of his state visit to Britain between May 24th and May 26th, according to Government sources.
The visit will be an official, not a State visit, which will give Mr Obama’s programme a degree of flexibility.
State visits follow a strict protocol which includes a State dinner, lunch with the Government, an official visit to Áras an Uachtaráin to meet the President, as well as the laying of a wreath in the Garden of Remembrance.
A State visit also entails a return dinner in the country of the visiting dignitary. Then president Mary Robinson was the guest of honour at a state dinner in Washington hosted by President Bill Clinton, following his first State visit to Ireland in 1995.
Details of the itinerary will be worked out over the coming weeks between Government officials and the White House. Mr Obama indicated yesterday he wished to visit his ancestral home in Moneygall on the Tipperary-Offaly border. John F Kennedy visited his family’s ancestral home in Dunganstown, Co Wexford, in 1963; Richard Nixon visited his maternal family’s burial ground near Timahoe, Co Kildare, in 1970; while Ronald Reagan visited Ballyporeen, Co Tipperary, in 1984.
It is not known as yet whether Mr Obama will address a joint sitting of the Houses of the Oireachtas. Three previous US presidents addressed joint sittings under the provisions of article 13.7 of the Constitution.
They were President Kennedy in June 1963; President Reagan in June 1984; and President Clinton in December 1995. British prime minister Tony Blair made an address in November 1998; and then taoiseach Bertie Ahern made a similar address at the House of Commons in 2007.
Only four other international leaders have addressed the Dáil – president of South Africa Nelson Mandela in 1990; German chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1996; and two Australian prime ministers, Bob Hawke in 1982 and Paul Keating in 1993. The prime minister of India, Pandit Nehru, was accorded a reception in the Dáil chamber in 1949, soon after his country gained independence.
It is likely Mr Obama will pay a courtesy visit to President McAleese at Áras an Uachtaráin.
