Irish Leader to Meet Reagan on St. Patrick’s Day

Prime Minister Charles Haughey, eager to boost U.S. investment in Ireland, will make a three-day trip to Washington next week to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and confer with President Reagan.

Haughey will also be eager to counteract what is perceived here as pessimistic foreign press comments on Ireland’s economic prospects in coverage of his narrow election victory last month, a government spokesman said.

He is also expected to launch a diplomatic initiative to win immunity for the estimated 100,000 Irish immigrants living illegally in the United States.

Haughey, taking over a country which has a 19% unemployment rate and thousands of youngsters lining up to emigrate, is also eager to increase the quota of U.S. visas available to the Irish.

On Tuesday, he will meet Reagan at the Irish Embassy in Washington for celebrations marking St. Patrick’s Day, which commemorates the country’s patron saint.

Promoting Tourism, Investment

Haughey, who is to present his government’s first budget on March 31 and has warned it will be a tough one, hopes the trip will pay dividends on two economic fronts--tourism and investment.

The number of American tourists visiting Ireland, ancestral home to an estimated 43 million Irish-Americans, dropped by about 20% last year with officials blaming a weak dollar, fallout fears after the Chernobyl nuclear accident and fears of terrorist attacks in Europe after the U.S. raid on Libya.

Haughey, a flamboyant millionaire who owns a private island off Ireland’s west coast, is eager to entice those tourists back and will join in an Irish Tourist Board promotion now being launched in the United States.

With Ireland’s national debt having doubled in the past four years and public spending soaring, Ireland’s economic woes came under the international spotlight in the general election last month.

Haughey, premier twice before, is concerned that the media painted too dark a picture of the country’s economic outlook and will be asking U.S. firms to consider more investment in Ireland.