Why Ireland’s politicians believe they can influence Washington

St Patrick’s Day is associated with its fair share of traditions, from wearing a sprig of shamrock, to attending a church service to sipping one (or several) pints of stout.

For politicians from the island of Ireland there’s one other annual tradition – a visit to Washington DC.

Every March dozens of people including politicians, business people and lobbyists from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland descend on the capital of the United States.

This year, a number of Northern Ireland politicians are refusing to make the trip over Donald Trump’s policies.

But what is the point of the events in the week running up to St Patrick’s Day, and if they didn’t happen, would anyone back home notice any difference?

Two of the main things that governments in Dublin and Belfast – as well as businesses – want to see come out of the trips are US investment and strong trading relationships.

Two men who have been to Washington several times as part of St Patrick’s Day events say there is no doubt the trips deliver results.

Steve Aiken took part in Washington St Patrick’s Day trips as the chief executive of the British-Irish Chamber of Commerce and later as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party.

The Stormont assembly member said it was impossible to build relationships to improve business and political ties without meeting face to face.

“It is all about the ability to talk to people you do not normally get the chance to talk to,” he said.

“As we learned during Covid, doing business over Zoom is not really doing business.

“You need to be in a room to do it and if you want to influence you have to be there to talk the talk; you cannot do it from 3,500 miles away.”

Aiken said that contrary to what the perception might be, it was not “a holiday”.

“You need to be over your brief and able to talk authoritatively and you need to have the answers to those questions – and you will be asked lots of questions and you will have a lot thrown at you,” he said.

Former Sinn Féin politician Máirtín Ó Muilleoir knows about both the benefits of being in the room and the disappointment of missing out.

The publisher of the Irish Echo attended the White House twice in that role, but did not travel to Washington during his time as Northern Ireland’s finance minister, after the Stormont Executive collapsed two months before the 2017 festivities.

He said the mood in the United States in the run-up to St Patrick’s Day made it the ideal time for Irish politicians and businesses to make their pitch.

“You think of the biggest companies in the US, they will all have promotions linked to St Patrick’s Day,” he said.

“You will go to a city in the US where there will be adverts everywhere.

“That means they are already doing some of the work for you.”

He said he believed there would be a major financial services announcement for Belfast in the coming days.

Apart from helping to develop a positive relationship between the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and the United States, it is slightly harder to pin down direct outcomes from the yearly visits – after all, there is a lot more to the relationship than just St Patrick’s Day.

In the 1990s, in particular, the visits were seen as important in the process that eventually led to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which largely ended the worst of three decades of violence known as the Troubles.

In 1995, the then Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams attended the White House – a year after President Bill Clinton intervened to grant him a US visa – a move opposed by the UK government.

Five years later, and two years after the 1998 Belfast Agreement, Adams posed for photos at the White House with President Clinton and then UUP leader David Trimble – a reflection of how times had changed.

Both Aiken and Ó Muilleoir say the visits are key for investment and US jobs in Northern Ireland.

In 2024 there were 285 US firms in Northern Ireland employing 31,915 people – up from 140 firms and 21,270 employees in 2010.

But Esmond Birnie, senior economist at Ulster University, said a direct link could not be drawn.

“It is impossible to quantify whether these political visits actually lead to investment or sales, so you cannot really prove it one way or another,” he said.

“On balance, the benefits are likely to be smaller than the fundamentals of training, skills, innovation and productivity and so forth.”

Dr Birnie said factors such as Northern Ireland’s location in both the UK and the European single market, relatively low labour costs and relatively low-level and unobtrusive regulations by continental European standards all made US companies keen to invest.

There was once a time when Irish-Americans were prominent at the top of US politics, with figures such as Senator Teddy Kennedy and House of Representatives Speaker Tip O’Neill promoting Irish interests in the corridors of power.

This was partly the result of years of high levels of emigration from Ireland to the US – the 1930 US census recorded 923,600 residents who were born on the island of Ireland.

By the turn of the century that had fallen to 169,600.

The end of the Troubles also meant fewer headlines about Northern Ireland.

“One of the problems every politician or influencer from the island of Ireland has – north or south – is to keep people interested in what is going on,” Aiken said.

“With everything else going on in the world, we are quite far down the list.”

Ó Muilleoir, however, said Ireland still had a privileged position in the US.

“I once met the consul of Switzerland in Manhattan and I was bemoaning the sense we did not have as much influence in New York anymore,” he said

“He said he had walked from Wall Street to Central Park and every block he saw an Irish flag – but he did not see any Swiss flags.”

Sinn Féin is boycotting events this year over President Donald Trump’s stance on the Israel-Gaza conflict, meaning Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill, the party’s deputy leader, will not be present.

The Social Democratic and Labour Party also said it would not attend if invited, and the Alliance Party is taking a similar stance.

Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly, of the Democratic Unionist Party, has said she will go to Washington DC, saying it was important to “maintain long and rewarding” relationships with the US.

Ó Muilleoir said politicians had to weigh up the pros and cons.

“This is probably the most difficult time to be in the White House on St Patrick’s,” he said.

“We are not the only people with moral dilemmas; it is for everybody to make their own choice.”