The Irish village that’s built a cottage industry as Obama’s ancestral home
That famous pint.
MONEYGALL, Ireland — Barack Obama’s approval ratings have plunged to George W. Bush levels of unpopularity, with half of Americans saying they don’t like the job he’s doing.
But if that news has the president feeling low, he can always take heart that at least one place in the world will always be glad to welcome him home.
That would be this tiny County Offaly village in central Ireland that’s built a cottage industry around its unlikely status as the ancestral home — well, an ancestral home — of the 44th president.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, an Irish-American genealogist found that then-Sen. Obama had a great-great-great-grandfather named Falmouth Kearney, a Moneygall resident who left for the US at 19.
Although its population of roughly 320 people is smaller than the typical entourage of an American president on a foreign state visit, Moneygall has wholeheartedly embraced its most famous great-great-great-grandson.
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Moneygall, Ireland. Barack Obama is 1/32nd Irish and this place is proud of it.
If there are places in the world that don’t like American tourists, Moneygall is not one of them. American flags and Irish tricolors line the village’s main street, which is crammed with as much Obamiana as the place can take.
There’s the Obama Cafe and Gift Shop, which sells T-shirts reading “Is Feidir Linn” (Gaelic for “Yes We Can”), hurling sticks with the president’s face and reproductions of Shepard Fairey’s famous Obama portrait superimposed over pictures of Moneygall.
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Amazingness in the Obama Cafe gift shop, Moneygall, Ireland: "Yes We Can" shirts in Gaelic; hurling sticks with presidential face on them. #globalpost
A bronze plaque adorns the house of a local grocer who turned out to be living in Obama’s ancestor’s former home.
Ollie Hayes Bar, which had the honor of serving the Obamas their much-photographed pints of Guinness on his state visit here in 2011, has hung on to virtually every possible scrap of memorabilia from the day: photographs of the Air Force One crew, framed photocopies of the Obamas’ autographs and the couple’s unwashed pint glasses.
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A framed photocopy of the Obamas' autographs at Ollie Hayes pub, Moneygall, Ireland. You are welcome to print a copy of this photo of a photocopy, and frame that. #globalpost
Before the world had heard of an ambitious young senator named Barack Obama, however, Moneygall was little more than a cluster of pebbledash houses halfway between Limerick and Dublin.
It was “very, very quiet, like you’d drive through it and keep going,” said one local, who didn’t want to be quoted disparaging a place that proudly touts itself on miles of highway billboards as “Barack Obama’s Ancestral Home.”
During the election and early days of Obama’s first term, the genealogical connection was a point of local pride.
But the news that the president’s 2011 state visit would include a few hours in Moneygall was a game-changer here.
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Moneygall, Ireland, the village (pop. 320) that has made an entire industry out of the fact that Obama has a great great great grandfather from there, and this one time, the president came to Moneygall and drank a beer. #globalpost
The village went on a frantic spree of repainting, repaving and replanting. Guinness sent a master brewer to the Ollie Hayes Bar with a special barrel of stout for the presidential pint.
A security cordon closed off the village to outsiders for 24 hours before the Obamas’ arrival, an amusing change in a place where people don’t bother locking their doors.
“It was unreal. It was absolutely brilliant. I had my three lads with me and it’s something we’ll never forget,” said Irene O’Rourke, who was part of the 5,000-strong crowd that waited in the rain to cheer the Obamas’ arrival.
The lucky fact of Obama’s heritage has been a post-recession boon. Before the president’s visit, Ollie Hayes Bar had to shorten its opening hours to make up for the fact that locals had less pocket money for pints.
Obama’s visit and distant ancestral link, however, has been a gift that keeps on giving for canny local authorities and developers. May saw the grand opening of Barack Obama Plaza, a brand-spanking-new gas station and food court off the N7 that has to be one of the world’s only truck stops named for a sitting president.
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Barack Obama Plaza opened July 4th this year – possibly the world' only truck stop named for a sitting president. Moneygall, Ireland. #globalpost
The $9 million project was one of the largest single investments in a decade in Ireland’s Midlands region, and with 70-odd jobs, it’s is the largest employer for miles. On July 4, the plaza opened the President Barack Obama Visitor Centre, a mini-museum dedicated to Obama’s Irish links and Irish-American history.
Moneygall’s celebration of Obama is an extreme version of Ireland’s efforts to reach out to the vast global population of people of Irish heritage — a group that surpasses Ireland’s population of 4.6 million many times over thanks to the island nation’s outpouring of immigrants.
The global financial crisis of 2008 brought an end to an unprecedented streak of economic prosperity in Irish history. Encouraging diaspora tourism is one of the government’s economic stimulus programs.
“The Gathering,” a yearlong initiative aimed at encouraging tourists of Irish heritage to visit the country, brought an estimated $216 million to the economy last year.
For his part, Obama has gamely reciprocated the Celtic love. At a speech in Dublin on his 2011 visit, he introduced himself as “Barack Obama, of the Moneygall O’Bamas.”
Publican Ollie Hayes and Henry Healy, a distant cousin of the president’s, were guests at the White House’s 2012 St. Patrick’s Day celebration.
“At the time, it was mayhem,” said Ollie’s wife Majella Hayes from behind the taps at the bar. “But we lived history, didn’t we? We lived history.”