US candidate’s Kilkenny link

The Irish roots of US vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan have been traced to County Kilkenny.

The great-great-grandparents of Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s running mate lived near Graignamanagh and were married in the parish, according to research carried out by an amateur historian in Chicago and published in The Sunday Times this weekend.

The historian, Rick Barrett, a retired police officer, told the newspaper that he hoped his research would prompt the candidate to visit Ireland in the run up to November’s US presidential election.

“If I were Paul Ryan, knowing that in a couple of weeks there’s going to be 60,000 Americans coming to Dublin for the Notre Dame vs US Navy football game, I’d be at that game,” the Times quoted him as saying. “Then I would take a trip to Cloghaste, my native ancestral land.”