Taoiseach Micheál Martin to address Hume Foundation's Derry peace event week after Belfast alert

Taoiseach Micheál Martin is to attend an event hosted by the John and Pat Hume Foundation in Londonderry, a week after Simon Coveney had to abandon a similar event in Belfast due a bomb alert.

Mr Martin is undertaking a series of engagements in Derry on Friday, including a visit to Ulster University’s Magee campus to meet those behind cross-border research projects.

He will then deliver the keynote address at the Derry Playhouse for the Hume Foundation, on the theme of Building Common Ground and how to enhance relationships in Northern Ireland, on the island of Ireland, and between Ireland and Britain.

Dr Sean Farren, Chair of the John and Pat Hume Foundation said: “The creation of genuine partnerships between within the North, between North and South and between Ireland and Britain, was a key aim of the Good Friday Agreement.

“Such partnerships would be forged by building common ground, ‘spilling our sweat together and not our blood’, as John Hume so often said.

“As we review the implementation of the agreement, we must acknowledge that too often we have failed to grasp opportunities to develop partnerships.

“Our society has remained the poorer of those failures.”

Last Friday, Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney was speaking at an event hosted by the Hume Foundation at the Houben Centre in north Belfast.

He was ushered out by security after a van driver was hijacked and forced to drive what he believed to be a live bomb to nearby Holy Cross Church, causing major disruption to the event and to a funeral being held at the church.

The device later turned out to be a hoax and a man has since appeared in court accused of preparation of terrorist acts, hijacking and placing an article causing a bomb hoax.