President Biden to appoint former Rep. Joe Kennedy III as U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland

President Biden will appoint former Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Joe Kennedy III – a grandson of former senator and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy — to be the next U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland, a U.S. official confirmed to CBS News. The position will focus on economic development and not the thorny negotiations involving the Northern Ireland Protocol. That protocol is meant to deal with maintaining an open border between Ireland and Northern Ireland as promised under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement but has been complicated by Britain's exit from the European Union. 

Despite the increasingly tense political situation in Northern Ireland ignited in part by Brexit, the Biden administration had left the position vacant until now. The Irish-American community had been urging Biden to appoint someone and had floated the name of former Rep. Bruce Morrison, a Connecticut Democrat, for the role.

Kennedy, who has the cachet of his family legacy and historic ties to Ireland, will be a high-profile appointee who carries the weight of close ties to Mr. Biden himself. It will also be a perch from which the 42-year-old former congressman can relaunch his political career, which has stalled following his failed 2020 challenge to Sen. Ed Markey in the Massachusetts Democratic primary.