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World Service,2 mins

Who were Joe Biden's Irish ancestors?

Newsday

Available for over a year

US President Joe Biden has never hidden his love for Ireland and has been hailed as the most Irish-American US President since John F Kennedy, but just how Irish is he? The Democrat has spoken frequently of his family ties to Ireland and in 2016 when he was then vice-president, he commissioned Fiona Fitzsimons, a genealogist from Dublin and director of the Irish Family History Centre, to trace his genealogy. She told Newsday: “We found out that 10 of the president’s great-great-grandparents were Irish. Nine were born in Ireland and a tenth, his great-great grandmother, Mary Ward, was born to Irish emigrants as they made their way to America. I think what’s really remarkable about them is they’re all famine Irish. They all arrived in the United States in a really narrow window between 1848 and 1860.� (Photo shows: A giant painting of Joe Biden, in his ancestral home of Ballina, north west Ireland, on October 7, 2020. Credit: Getty Images)

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