US President Donald Trump will visit Ireland this weekend, News Editor Daire Lydon examines how this visit will be different
US President Donald Trump will arrive in Ireland on Saturday 12 September, splitting two days of presidential engagements between meetings in Dublin and the final weekend of the Irish Open at his Doonbeg resort in County Clare.
The US president is expected to remain in the US for the 25th anniversary commemoration of the September 11 attacks before travelling to Ireland.
Trump is due to meet President Catherine Connolly and Taoiseach Micheál Martin in Dublin before travelling west to Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in Doonbeg where the Amgen Irish Open is being held, a property Trump has owned since 2014.
Trump’s meeting with Connolly is a late addition. A draft itinerary circulating in early August contained no engagement at Áras an Uachtaráin, although Connolly had previously said she would consider any request to meet the US President. RTÉ reported on 3 September that the meeting between the two will now go ahead.
It is expected to be a brief meeting, distinguishing it from the more extensive presidential visits made by Barack Obama in 2011 and Joe Biden in 2023. The visit has not been designated a state visit.
Dublin’s Phoenix Park will be closed to the public due to Trump’s visit from the 10 to 12 September for the US president’s meeting with Connolly, with Farmleigh House expected to host the Taoiseach’s engagement.
A stop at the site of the new US embassy in Ballsbridge, where Trump had been expected to turn the sod, now appears to have been cancelled on security and logistical grounds.
He is expected to travel to Doonbeg on Saturday afternoon and spend the night at the resort before departing Ireland on either Sunday evening or Monday morning.
A short itinerary will still require a large security operation. Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly has declared the visit an “extraordinary event”, with thousands of gardaí expected to be deployed across Dublin, Shannon Airport and Doonbeg.
Protests are planned in Dublin, Doonbeg and Shannon Airport. A demonstration under the banner “No Welcome for Trump” will assemble at the Garden of Remembrance on Saturday 12 September, organised by groups including the Irish Neutrality League, ROSA, United Against Racism and the Irish Anti-War Movement.
Elected in October 2025, Connolly has been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration and protested against his last visit in 2019 at Shannon Airport. In her Saint Patrick’s Day message, she said that “the normalisation of war can never be accepted”. Former Irish ambassador to Washington Dan Mulhall told RTÉ this week that he expects the encounter to go well.