Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has travelled to County Mayo on the second day of his state visit to the Republic of Ireland.
Carney, who spent Saturday in Dublin with Taoiseach (Irish PM) Micheál Martin, met his cousins on Sunday in Aughagower – the village his grandparents, Robert and Nora Moran, left when they emigrated to Canada in 1925.
Carney has said he is proud of his family heritage and described his Irish ancestry as a “big part of who I am”.
Irish President Catherine Connolly met Carney in Westport House on Sunday morning.
During his Mayo visit, the Canadian prime minister and his wife Diana Fox Carney attended Mass at the parish church and visited a graveyard where some of his relatives are buried.
When asked what it was like to be in Aughagower, Carney said: “It’s fantastic to be back, I’ve been here twice, but no one noticed the last few times I came, so it’s a great thrill.”
Carney met more than 20 of his cousins including Pat Carney and Maureen O’Malley, first cousins of his father and two of the prime minister’s closest Irish relatives.
Carney met his oldest living relatives Maureen and Pat Carney [PA Media]
After Mass, Carney planted an Irish oak tree in the cemetery.
He joked that he had a previous “career as a gardener”, and his wife Diana Fox quoted Christy Moore’s Don’t Forget Your Shovel as he worked.
Speaking after the Mass, he thanked people for coming and encouraged them to visit what was once “Carney’s sweetshop” and the local pub.
It is the first bilateral visit to Ireland by a Canadian prime minister since Justin Trudeau’s in 2017 [Reuters]
Earlier, Maureen O’Malley’s daughter, Rosaleen Heraty, told Ireland’s national broadcaster RTÉ about the family connection.
“Mam and Pat’s father was John Carney and he was the brother of Robert Carney, who is Mark Carney’s grandfather. Imagine, his grandson is the prime minister of Canada,” she said.
“It’s all we can talk about, generations of the Carney clan, and we are so excited to finally meet him.
“If you compare photos of him and his grandfather Robert, there is an uncanny likeness. I noticed it when I spotted him on the telly when he was Governor of the Bank of England. I saw the name Carney and saw the face and said it to Mam.
“She hardly missed a beat and just said ‘ah yeah, we haven’t seen them for years’,” said Heraty.
Heraty, manager at the Townhall Theatre in Westport, said she has been busy preparing for the civic reception on Sunday evening to honour Carney.
During the ceremony Carney will be presented with a commemorative history of the Carneys, written by local Westport historian Harry Hughes, alongside fellow researchers and editors James Kelly and Micheál Casey.
Tenant farmers who endured famine aftermath
Martin said the visit would be an opportunity for Carney to celebrate and explore his Irish heritage [Reuters]
The Carney and Moran families were tenant farmers on the estate of Lord Sligo.
The Carney homestead, located in the townland of Ayle, was a standard rural dwelling of the time: a thatched cottage with two windows in the front. Nine people lived in two rooms, with a third room added later.
The Moran home in the townland of Mace North was nearby.
Both Ayle and Mace were in the parish of Aughagower, where, according to local lore, St Patrick is believed to have stopped off on his way to Croagh Patrick.
The prime minister’s grandparents would have faced much hardship during their life in Ireland, living through a period of upheaval and transformation that followed the Irish famine.
When they left, they would have become part of the wave of mass emigration that saw more than one million people sail from the island.
The couple emigrated to Canada in 1925, married the following year and had three sons.