Mother wins battle to prove girl is Irish

A SIX-YEAR-OLD African girl has been saved from an African orphanage after a DNA test proved her mother’s story that her father was an Irish soldier on UN duty in Eritrea.

Since 2003, her mother, Martha Woldu Hagos, has been protesting her daughter’s Irish identity, but the department wanted approval “by formal means”. A DNA test was eventually carried out last year.

The Department of Foreign Affairs had refused to accept Martina Padwick was the daughter of Martin Padwick, a soldier from Cork who died in 2002 after returning from a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Asmara, the Eritrean capital.