From yesterday's Ireland Online, "Govt urged to cancel planned Bush visit":

Irish MEPs Patricia McKenna and Pronsias de Rossa have called on the Government to cancel US President George W Bush’s planned visit to Ireland in June.

The Green Party and Labour Party MEPs said the EU-US summit that Mr Bush is due to attend should be held in Brussels rather than in Ireland.

They made the comments at a press conference organised by anti-war groups to promote a demonstration this Saturday to mark the first anniversary of the US/British invasion of Iraq.

The groups said the protest would give people an opportunity to express their opposition to Mr Bush’s visit to Ireland.

Speaking at this morning’s press conference, Ms McKenna said Mr Bush would use his planned visit to Ireland as part of his re-election campaign.

"Clearly, there’s no Irish-American votes to be had in Brussels and that’s the one priority for Bush - to get re-elected," she said.

"I don’t think that Ireland should facilitate his re-election. He has done untold damage to global security. He has made the world a more insecure rather than a more secure place and I believe it would be in the interests of the international community not to give support to Bush’s re-election campaign by allowing him to come to Ireland."