This weekend, Micheál Martin is preparing for one of the most difficult challenges of his career: navigating the alligator swamp of Washington and emerging with all his limbs, and the future of the Irish economy, intact and in working order.

Last year, Martin sweated and grinned his way through nearly an hour in the Oval Office with a genial Donald Trump. The President was bonhomie personified throughout the day’s several engagements. But the times are such that an air of menace and threat was never absent. Trump’s administration seems to work like a medieval court, where all depends on the mood of the king. Who knows what will be the royal humour come Tuesday?

This week, the Taoiseach got some advice from President Catherine Connolly – who effectively urged him to call out the American assault on Iran as illegal and wrong.

Connolly did not specifically mention the US or Israel but her criticism of the Government for failing to condemn the attacks on Iran, although implied, was unmistakable. That is certainly how it was viewed in Government Buildings.

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Rather than adopt the meek silence that was customary whenever Michael D Higgins let fly, the Government instead answered back. “It is important to........

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