President Obama’s visit - Welcome to Ireland Mr President

PRESIDENT Barack Obama will be the sixth President of America to visit Ireland when he arrives today.

Just like his five predecessors he can lay claim to Irish roots and say that his very welcome arrival on our shores is part homecoming, part political mission and, as sceptics can insist, part election photo opportunity.

Just as with Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and Bush, genealogists can confirm that Barack Obama can trace a strand of his ancestry to one of the millions of Irish people who went to America over the last four centuries to try to build a new life.