Joe Biden lands in Belfast ahead of four-day visit to island of Ireland

Joe Biden has landed in Northern Ireland ahead of a four-day visit to the island of Ireland to underpin his support for peace in the country and to celebrate his Irish roots.

Heavy security on both sides of the border preceded the US entourage, which will include the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and a recently appointed economic envoy to Northern Ireland, Joseph Kennedy III.

Biden will meet Sunak again on Wednesday morning and then make a speech at Ulster University in Belfast, his only public engagement in Northern Ireland, before heading south across the border for three days of pomp and pilgrimage in Ireland.

Sunak will not meet Northern Ireland party leaders but the spokesperson said he had not given up on persuading the Democratic Unionist party to drop its year-long boycott of power-sharing in protest against the post-Brexit Northern Ireland protocol. The mothballing of the Stormont assembly and executive has created a political vacuum and overshadowed celebrations of the Good Friday agreement anniversary.

After the university address Biden is scheduled to fly to Dublin and then travel to the border town of Carlingford in County Louth where his great-grandfather James Finnegan was born. He is to meet extended family, visit a 13th-century castle and do a walkabout in Dundalk before returning to Dublin.

On Thursday, he will hold separate meetings with the Irish president, Michael D Higgins, and the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, before making a speech to a joint sitting of parliament, following in the footsteps of John F Kennedy in 1963, Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1995. There will be a banquet dinner at Dublin Castle.

On Friday, Biden will fly to County Mayo and tour the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Knock, a Catholic shrine, where he is expected to pray.

The only problem, besides traffic havoc caused by security, is the threat of rain, said Blewitt. On Thursday night, she said, residents will put out Child of Prague statues in keeping with a folklore belief that this increases the chances of good weather.