Donald Trump's return to the White House is shaping the global news agenda on a daily basis,

and his first opportunity to remake his country's relationship with the island of Ireland is just around the corner.

St Patrick's Day is only weeks away, and it's clear that many on this side of the Atlantic are focused on the challenges involved

in building and maintaining constructive relations with the new administration in Washington.

We have a great panel to talk through just what's at stake and how next month's stateside visitors need to play their respective hands.

Adrian O'Neill is a former Irish ambassador to the UK, and before that, he was for many years a senior official at the Department of Foreign Affairs. Chris

Donahue served as government press secretary under Simon Harris's recent premiership and is a former

journalist. Christina Finn is political editor of the Dublin-basedjournal.I.E. website. Tim Cairns is a former

DUP special advisor and Tom Kelly was an assistant to the former STLP Deputy First Minister Seamus Malin and writes of course a weekly column for the Irish News. Welcome to you all. It's great to have you on board. Christina, we're recording this on Wednesday afternoon. So by my reckoning St Patrick's Day is 33 days away. Politicians and business leaders from both

sides of the border are already discussing whether or not they intend to travel to Washington for

this year's events, but not a single invitation has been issued by the White House. Is that

power for the course at this stage? It would be power for the course really in terms of the lateness, I think, that the government gets any sort of notice that an invitation, I suppose, lands on the desk.

But the expectation is always there that one is coming.

And I assume that if one wasn't coming, it would be well signalled at this stage so you've had

you know Simon Harris and miho martin out saying you know they they expect to be asked that

Trump has a good relationship with Ireland so they aren't getting any alarm bells as of yet that

that invite won't land and as we've've seen the press release has gone out,

they're announcing where they're going.

And the Taoiseach has said today that he's off to D.C. and to Texas.

So I think the expectation very much is that they will all be flying off,

many of them to the United States, for the week of St. Patrick's Day.

Chris, elements of this story

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