Obama brings Moneygall cousin to his local for a pint

EAT YOUR hearts out, politicians of the world. An accountant and a pub-owner from Moneygall, Co Offaly, spent close to an hour with the most powerful man on earth on St Patrick’s Day. Henry Healy – a distant cousin of Mr Obama’s – and Ollie Hayes arrived at the White House at 11.30am on Saturday for a tour of the West Wing, including the Oval Office, while the president worked elsewhere. When they met Barack Obama at the diplomatic entrance, the Irishmen presented him with a Moneygall soccer jersey emblazoned with “2012 Is Féidir Linn”. Let’s go for a pint at the pub, the president suggested. They bundled into an armoured SUV – just the three of them and the driver – and headed in a convoy of 15 to 20 vehicles for the Dubliner Pub, near Union Station.

Mr Obama reminisced about his trip to Ireland last May. How do the Irish play golf in such wind, he wondered. Mr Hayes told Mr Obama he would have to play a game “the next time he’s over”.

The president said he and the first lady were very relaxed and felt at home in Moneygall, Mr Healy said. “He indicated that it was quite moving when he went into his ancestral home.”

Mr Obama asked if as people “on the coalface, on the ground, did we think there was a recovery” in Ireland, Mr Healy continued.

“We told him it was evident that things were improving. The austerity that has been imposed on us was required, we said, and it’s working well and Ireland will be back. We are a determined country, we told him. We are used to getting knocked, but we always come back on top again.”

Only Mr Hayes finished his pint. Mr Obama “was going back to work, so I suppose he didn’t want to be under the influence”, Mr Healy observed. He added that Henry VIII, the nickname Mr Obama gave him, had stuck. “It’s a fun name. I don’t mind. When the president of the United States christens you something, I think it’s pretty special.”