FitzGerald, Reagan’s Tipp ancestry

The good working relationship between my father and President Reagan is well documented, as is the President’s intervention with Prime Minister Thatcher in 1984 to get the Anglo-Irish talks back on track.

The fact that the FitzGeralds and the Reagans came from the same parish in Tipperary has only been uncovered in recent years by local genealogists, Karol DeFalco and Ed O’Riordan. Therefore, this could not have been a factor in my father’s relationship with the President. I am sorry if my unscripted remarks at the recent Young Fine Gael Summer School were inadvertently misconstrued.

I know that my father would want to have it acknowledged that President Reagan’s engagement with Irish affairs was achieved through the efforts of Tipp O’Neill and the then Irish Ambassador to Washington, Seán Donlon.