US President Donald Trump’s budget director has said the US will compete with Ireland to attract back US multinationals with operations in Ireland.
Speaking to RTÉ News in Washington DC, Director of the Office for Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney said it was not that the US was targeting Ireland, but that it was "competing" with Ireland, and that better competition was a "win-win" for everyone.
Mr Mulvaney is responsible for drafting Mr Trump’s budget.
The Irish-American, whose paternal great-great-grandfather emigrated from Mayo, was a congressman for South Carolina before he was tapped by Mr Trump to be a member of his cabinet.
He said Ireland was "beating" the US but that his country is going to try to compete and give incentives to get companies to come back to the US.
Mr Mulvaney said President Trump is "not anti-trade", he just wanted "fair trade".
He said the US would compete "fairly and on a level playing field".
Ireland, he said, had done a "tremendous job" in creating an environment conducive to multinational business growth, which he said was why Apple and Microsoft were in Ireland.
Earlier today President Trump said, after 40 days in office, he would award himself an A-grade for achievement but a C/C+ for messaging, and Mr Mulvaney agreed that Mr Trump had not done as good a job as he could in communicating the message of his presidency.
On the issue of immigration in particular, as the descendant of immigrants, Mr Mulvaney said the way his country has been "handling immigrants in the US" since Mr Trump became president "just hasn’t been messaged well".
He said they were "not running innocent people out of the country" that there was "no mass deportation", but rather they were only "going after people who've committed crimes".
He said that the US "is still a great place for immigration, still looking for people from all over the world to come here, we just make sure folks contribute to society and not detract from it".
Mr Mulvaney said he had talked with Mr Trump about his priorities, and had pledged to give him something in line with what he promised on the campaign trail, and that included extra spending on defence, on law enforcement and less spending on foreign aid and other policies.
He said it was not "the exact budget" that he would have come up with, but said that at the end of the day "I am not the president", but it is "nothing more than his promises put to numbers".
He said they had freed up a little money to pay for the beginning of the border construction and would then figure out how to "ramp up expenditure on border protection" in 2018.
In terms of Mr Trump's address to Congress, he felt that people would see the real Mr Trump, describing him as "a square peg in a round hole".
He said the administration "hadn't really figured out how to talk to the media yet" and the media has not figured out how to listen to Mr Trump yet.
Mr Mulvaney’s great-great-grandfather Matthew Mulvaney emigrated to Canada before settling in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
The family only knows that he came from "some part of Mayo" because he did not list a middle name and it has not proved possible to trace the family's roots.
His daughter previously studied at a secondary school in Dublin and she is now considering attending university in Dublin.
Mr Mulvaney says he travels to Ireland every second year with his father and they play golf in Lahinch, and he always has Kerrygold butter in the fridge.
He believes the Irish blood in his veins shapes how he behaves and said he was recently having an "animated discussion" with the president in the Oval Office and was pulled aside by an adviser who reminded him that it was the Oval Office and he might want to "change his style".
However, Mr Mulvaney responded that he did not think the Irish could change their style, saying "either you like it or you don’t", and adding "but I think the president likes it".
