Prince Philip visits Ireland, paves the way
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This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from November 1998.
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Dubbed "The Duke of Hazard" by one newspaper for his comments about local customs and people on previous foreign trips, the Duke of Edinburgh's helicopter landed in Phoenix Park where he met Irish president and head of state Mary McAleese.
Ostensibly visiting to announce a youth awards conference, Prince Philip's presence had a wider meaning - he is the first royal consort to come to the republic and the last British head of state in Dublin was King George V, who died in 1936.
George visited before partition into a British-ruled province and a southern state which became the Irish Republic, and before the 1979 killing of the Queen's cousin, Earl Mountbatten, by the Irish Republican Army.
But Northern Ireland's peace deal is helping to heal wounds inflicted by centuries of mutual mistrust which culminated in a 30-year conflict between pro-British and pro-Irish gunmen. Deeply-held differences over Britain's role on the island lay at the heart of the bloodshed, with the Protestant majority cherishing their historic links to London and Catholics yearning to end them in favour of rule from Dublin.
A peace deal signed in April was designed to draw a line under more than 3,600 violent deaths inflicted by the IRA, its foes in the Protestant Ulster Defence Association and smaller groups on either side of the divide. Buckingham Palace has said a trip by the Queen herself is being considered but that there are no specific plans yet.
Before leaving for Northern Ireland, the Prince also met Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, ruler of a country whose constitution long aspired to end British sovereignty on the island.
There have been many royal visits to the province but until now such a trip to the republic and away from the watchful eye of the British army would have been virtually unthinkable.
Prince Philip and President McAleese met first at her residence and then in Dublin Castle, long the seat of British rule before Dublin won independence. They announced details of a global "Millennium Gold Encounter" in 1999 which will be hosted by Gaisce, an Irish youth achievement scheme whose patron is McAleese, and its UK counterpart The Duke of Edinburgh's Award.
"I welcome this particular initiative enormously because I think it would be ridiculous to pretend that there haven't been problems between the north and south," Prince Philip said, describing the differences as "rather artificial". "It's going to involve people of a younger age group and if they can begin to understand each other, it can only be good for all communities concerned," he added.
McAleese said "new avenues of communication and new opportunities" were opening up following the peace deal. While hailing his visit as historic, one local newspaper recalled previous occasions when the Prince had angered his hosts like when he made off-the-cuff remarks which labeled Chinese people as "slitty-eyed" and Hungarians "pot-bellied". "We wait with bated breath to see if the Duke of Edinburgh can manage to spend a whole day in Ireland without putting his foot in it," Myles McWeeney wrote in the Irish Independent under the headline: "Prince Philip, the Duke of Hazard".
