Joe Kennedy, grandson of Robert Kennedy, named special envoy to Northern Ireland by Biden

president Joe Biden give it a name Robert Kennedy’s grandchildren and predecessors MassachusettsCongressman Joe Kennedy as the administration’s special envoy to Northern Ireland.

That makes Kennedy, 42, the third member of America’s most famous Irish-American political dynasty to be given diplomatic status by Biden.

He is ambassador to Austria with his aunt, Ted Kennedy’s widow and lawyer Victoria, 68, and ambassador to Australia with his cousin, Caroline, 65, daughter of John F. Kennedy.

According to multiple reports, Joe Kennedy III will take office before the new year. Diplomatic appointments after January 3, 2023 require ratification by the United States. Senate, per the new rules. Its ratification could take several months.

With relations between the United States and Great Britain chilling as a result of the unresolved Northern Ireland Protocol, Kennedy steps into the business at a crucial time.

The role of special envoy has been vacant since former President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney resigned following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots.

talk wall street journal, Government sources said Kennedy’s role would be less political and more focused on economic issues.

The source told the WSJ:

new york times Kennedy’s appointment, meanwhile, has been in the works for months, with hopes that the former Congressman’s legacy will revitalize US ties in Ireland.

Victoria Kennedy, the designated U.S. Ambassador to Austria, is the widow of former Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy and uncle of Joe Kennedy III.

U.S. Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy, daughter of JFK, pictured with President Biden in Boston, September 2022

The protocol, which allows free trade across Irish borders, was first established in 2019 to preserve previous peace agreements in the wake of Brexit. This has been a source of dispute between the UK and the European Union.

Since 1995, special envoys have been sent to Northern Ireland from various governments. Among those who helped establish this role was Kennedy’s father, Joe Kennedy II.

The first envoy was former Maine Senator George Mitchell, who helped broker the Good Friday Accord in 1998.

The reason for delaying the announcement of Kennedy’s appointment was Biden’s desire for the UK and the EU to establish a concrete agreement on the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Biden is scheduled to visit the troubled country this year as part of the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Good Friday Agreement.

Biden is the second Catholic president in US history, the first being John F. Kennedy. While serving as a Delaware senator, Biden was known to be close to Kennedy Ted, who he served as a senator from Massachusetts from 1962 until 2009.

Kennedy is the grandson of RFK, who was murdered in 1968 by Muslim gunman Sirhan Sirhan while campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president.

Kennedy is the grandson of RFK, who was killed in 1968 by Muslim gunman Sirhan Sirhan while campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president.

Between 2013 and 2021, Kennedy represented Massachusetts, leaving his position to contest the state’s incumbent Democratic Senator Ed Markey for the party’s nomination. received little public attention, despite appearing as a commentator on

According to the group’s website, his work mostly takes place behind the scenes on the Groundwork project.

In his farewell address to Congress, Kennedy spent time mocking the “big lie of our time” that governments lack the resources and will to help those in need. said that the real problem is greed, not want.

Rep. Kennedy of Massachusetts addressed the House floor for five minutes, calling his four terms in Congress an honor and saying he was resigning “proudly and with hope.”

He described the United States as a “complex and troublesome country.” He said he had “violated our founding promises before the ink was dry”, citing slavery and rights that initially applied primarily to “wealthy, white, Protestant men”.

However, without mentioning names or political parties, he called the progress “a counterweight to the great lie of our time, that the American pie is finite.”

“For my family to survive, your family must suffer.

“The richest nation on earth is plagued by some form of scarcity, not by greed.”

He said, “It is the task of our generation to loosen the grip of that lie on our country.

“For those who feel invisible, unheard and non-existent. For those who most need support and protection, justice and opportunity, told by governments that they have no room, no money, no time and no will. I was.

“And that injustice is a reality carved in stone rather than a deliberate choice by those in power about who is worthy and who is not.”