{"id":197816,"date":"2025-11-24T15:58:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T15:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/197816\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T15:58:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T15:58:09","slug":"taoiseach-defends-his-level-of-foreign-travel-during-trip-to-angola-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/197816\/","title":{"rendered":"Taoiseach defends his level of foreign travel during trip to Angola \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a> has robustly defended the extent of his foreign travel during 2025, arguing that international engagement is vital and that going back to an \u201cisolationist position\u201d where Ireland<\/a> does not attend any meeting is \u201cridiculous\u201d. <\/p>\n

Mr Martin has been abroad 20 times since becoming Taoiseach early this year. UK prime minister Keir Starmer<\/a> has come under fire in Britain for spending too long abroad and not focusing enough on domestic issues. Mr Starmer has travelled abroad on fewer occasions than the Taoiseach this year. <\/p>\n

The Taoiseach questioned the premise of such a position and said it was not an objective one. <\/p>\n

\u201cMost people in the country accept that the leader of the country has to engage internationally,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo much emanates from the international world in terms of influence. The first crisis we had to deal with was the tariffs issue. It is important for jobs in our economy, for the technology industry, for the life sciences industry. We navigated that well both within the European Union and indeed with the United States. That\u2019s why international engagement matters, for God\u2019s sake. <\/p>\n

\u201cDo people think we go back to a sort of an isolated position where we don\u2019t attend any meetings? This is ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Martin was speaking in Luanda, the capital of Angola, in advance of a meeting between European leaders and their counterparts from Africa. He has travelled to Angola from South Africa<\/a> where he attended the G20 summit<\/a> over the course of the weekend.<\/p>\n

The Taoiseach insisted he limited his visits to functional meetings and ones that were in Ireland\u2019s interests. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t go abroad for any other reason than to advance the country\u2019s agenda, and in particular with the tariff situation. So I went to Japan because Japan invests hugely in Ireland \u2026 .<\/p>\n

\u201cThe counter move against tariffs is to double down on trade deals with other important economic entities, and we have to engage as a country doing that.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0First G20 on African soil undermined by Trump administrationOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cIf people want to withdraw in sort of cheap commentary on soundbites and go the isolationist role and not engage with people, the country will be poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Martin said he was not aware of any people within his party criticising him for travelling abroad. <\/p>\n

\u201cAre people saying we shouldn\u2019t attend Cop?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a need for a bit of common sense, a sense of perspective,\u201d he added, arguing that those who were criticising it were making a mountain out of a molehill. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin has robustly defended the extent of his foreign travel during 2025, arguing that international engagement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[4204,9,10,13,14,17244,6,11,12,15,16,5765,5,5258,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-197816","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-g20","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-micheal-martin","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-south-africa","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-topstories","24":"tag-world","25":"tag-world-news","26":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}