Moneygall pub 'inundated' in election run-up

Once more with feeling and for the last time, the village of Moneygall will hold its breath for a US presidential election.

Four years ago there was a sense of novelty about Barack Obama’s unlikely connection with the village. A visit was a pipedream then, but it has since come to fruition, on a squally May day last year, and nothing will ever be the same irrespective of whether President Obama is re-elected.

Ollie Hayes’s bar, where President Obama drank his pint of Guinness, will be the place for the celebrations, or commiserations, depending on the result.

The president’s long-lost cousin, Henry Healy, said they thought the media had grown tired of the story, but they have been “inundated” as the election has drawn nearer. “How many villages get to be involved in the biggest news story in the world?”

No such excitement is gripping the Kilkenny village of Graiguenamanagh, ancestral home of Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan.

Local Labour councillor Tommy Prendergast said he was surprised there was not more interest, but people were consumed by their own difficulties.

The American embassy will hold an invitation-only event at the Guinness Storehouse tomorrow night.