Yesterday’s was the first council meeting to be held in Northern Ireland and the first to be attended by the province’s First Minister, Ian Paisley, and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuiness – who were prominent figures on either side of the political spectrum in the last decades of the Troubles. Senator Walker, who attended the meeting with States chief executive Bill Ogley, international relations officer Mike Entwistle and BIC co-ordinator Jean-Marc Blanchet, said that the opportunity to speak to the British Prime Minister less than a month of his taking office was a valuable one. ‘I was able to speak to Gordon Brown and he was extremely warm and affable towards me and to Jersey as a whole, and we had a brief but important discussion,’ said Senator Walker. ‘We talked about recognition of Jersey and he informed me that he had spent a holiday in the Island some years ago.I immediately invited him to do so again in the near future.
Jersey Evening Post
