Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has said she hopes President Catherine Connolly will speak to US president Donald Trump about Gaza, and “people are right to protest” his upcoming visit to Ireland.

Mr Trump is set to arrive in Ireland on Saturday and will meet a number of senior figures. He is expected to be greeted by Tánaiste Simon Harris, and will meet with President Catherine Connolly at Áras an Uachtaráin.

He will also have an engagement with US ambassador to Ireland Edward Walsh at the ambassador’s Deerfield residence, where he is expected to make a speech, and will meet with Taoiseach Micheál Martin at Farmleigh House.

Following his engagements in Dublin, the US president is scheduled to spend Sunday in attendance at the final round of the Irish Open, which is being hosted at his Trump International Golf Club in Doonbeg, Co Clare.

With protests planned for the weekend, Ms McDonald said she hopes President Connolly will raise issues like the “ongoing facilitation of a genocide in Gaza” with Mr Trump.

“I have no doubt that she will discharge her duties admirably,” the Sinn Féin leader told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland from her party’s think-in in Dublin’s Malahide.

“I would hope that in the course of the exchange – I’m not sure how long her exchange will be with him, I imagine that it will be short and perhaps quite limited – but I do believe that the ongoing violations of international law, the ongoing facilitation of a genocide in Gaza, the horrific scenes from the West Bank, and settler violence and terrorism, I think need to be raised with President Trump because the United States sadly is facilitating all of that.

“And I know there’ll be protests against this visit. People are right to protest at every turn when international law is being violated in such a brazen and sustained way.”

Ms McDonald was also asked about the prospect of Sinn Féin forming a left-wing government without Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael after the next general election.

She said the current Dáil term “has been like no other” for cooperation between Opposition parties.

“We haven’t talked about the next government, we deal with the politics in the here and now,” she said.

“All of that political cooperation has to be developed and has to evolve, and just to just to be clear, and I’m sure others from other parties would make this clear, we will go into the next election individually on our own platforms and in our own right.

“But I believe that there is still an appetite, and the potential, and the necessity, for government beyond Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

“I understand that view is held by others, and I think it’s in our collective interest, and more importantly Ireland’s interest, that we work together to make that a real possibility, and a real alternative, an option for voters when the election occurs.”