Biden to address Irish parliament on historic visit

After a frosty encounter north of the border, US President Joe Biden is assured of a far warmer welcome by lawmakers in Ireland on Thursday during a visit to the country of his ancestral roots.

Biden, who is only the second Catholic president in America's history, headed south on Wednesday to observe a disembarkation point for some of his 19th-century Irish forebears, following a speech in UK-ruled Northern Ireland.

Braving a typical Irish drizzle, Biden said "It feels wonderful! Feels like I'm coming home", while visiting Carlingford Castle.

Earlier, his one-night stop in Belfast was shadowed by the recriminations of pro-UK unionists who accused Biden of betraying "anti-British" feeling despite his attempts to bolster economic growth in the territory, 25 years after a US-brokered peace agreement.

Biden, who declares Ireland to be "part of my soul", told an audience at Belfast's Ulster University that he cared about peace for the whole of the divided island.

He urged the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to end its boycott of Northern Ireland's Stormont legislature, advertising the promise in return of investment from "scores of major American corporations" if political stability returns.

In addressing the Irish parliament, known as the Oireachtas, in Dublin, Biden will follow in steps first walked by John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who in June 1963 became the first sitting president to visit Ireland -- five months before his assassination.

In his speech, Kennedy remarked that the parliament building -- Leinster House -- had once belonged to his ancestors the Fitzgeralds, the earls of Kildare. But, he joked, "I have not come here to claim it".

Instead, he dwelt on "the many and the enduring links which have bound the...