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President Biden regularly speaks of his Irish heritage and had promised to visit the country during his term in office.
A US genealogist who researched Mr Biden’s lineage has estimated he is “roughly five-eighths” Irish.
His maternal great-great-grandfather Owen Finnegan departed Carlingford in County Louth in the late 1840s to travel to America.
Among his great-grandparents was Edward Blewitt, who left the west coast town of Ballina in County Mayo in 1850 to emigrate to the US.
He settled in Scranton in Pennsylvania as the devastating Irish potato famine was causing widespread starvation.
In his speech in Dundalk, Mr Biden said his ancestors left Ireland at about the same time as former US President Barack Obama’s great-great-great-grandfather Falmouth Kearney, who was from Moneygall in County Offaly.
“They would never have dreamed that their grandsons would have been presidents of the United States,” he said.
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