Plumber Joe Blewitt who is a cousin of Democratic U.S. presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden
Credit: REUTERS
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Ireland may be in a national lockdown because of the Covid crisis but Ballina in the west of Ireland is bustling with activity as locals celebrate the town’s most famous son winning the race for the White House.
Joe Biden’s great-great-great grandfather Edward Blewitt and his wife Mary left the small Mayo town 160 years ago. Joe Blewitt has a plumbing business in Ballina and gained national and international notoriety months ago when his cousin was declared the Democratic candidate for the US presidential election by emblazoning ‘Joe Biden for the White House and Joe Blewitt for your house’ across the side of his van.
Mr Blewitt (pictured below) and his two sisters have visited Biden in the US. “He promised us he will visit us again when he is President," he told The Telegraph.
Credit: AFP
“There is great excitement in the town, I’m absolutely delighted. It will be great for Ballina and for Ireland,” Mr Blewitt added.
Mr Blewitt met his cousin for the first time in 2016 when Mr Biden made his first trip to Ireland to visit the ancestral home and research the family tree.
Mr Biden returned to Mayo in 2017, the year he stood down as vice-president, to open a cancer hospice centre in nearby Castlebar. The hospice is named in honour of his son Beau who died of brain cancer in 2015.
Ballina is twinned with Scranton in Pennsylvania, which is Mr Biden’s hometown. There was a socially distant car rally through Ballina on Tuesday night as locals came out in large numbers to support Biden in the election.
Credit: PA
The president-elect is also related to Rob Kearney, an Irish international rugby player. When Ireland beat New Zealand for the first time ever in Chicago in November 2016, Mr Biden tweeted “congratulations cousin”. On Friday night Mr Kearney tweeted the same message to the president-elect.
According to opinion polls the overwhelming majority of Irish people backed Mr Biden in the race for the White House. He has said on a number of occasions that he is very proud of his Irish background. He claims that he overcame a stutter that blighted his childhood by reciting Irish poetry to his bedroom mirror.
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Even though the Irish government did not declare support for either candidate, privately Dublin had hoped Mr Biden would prevail.
The Democratic candidate has said on a number of occasions that protecting peace on the island of Ireland is one of his top priorities and he has warned the British government that he would veto any US trade deal with the UK if Brexit risks undermining the Good Friday Agreement. President Trump’s pro-Brexit stance was not well received in Irish government circles.
Joe Biden with some of his Blewitt cousins
Ireland has the highest level of US per capita foreign direct investment. President Trump’s ‘America first’ agenda caused unease in Dublin as it was seen as a threat to future investment and the expectation is that the Irish government will have a much closer relationship with Mr Biden.
One senior political source in Dublin says that as Mr Biden pivots US foreign policy to forging much closer ties with the EU, Ireland could act as a link between Washington and Brussels.
Another diplomatic source said there would be clear limits to Mr Biden’s relationship with Ireland.
“For example if there was a border poll on Irish unity, then there would be no circumstances in which a Biden White House would take sides.”
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