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TD MICHAEL HEALY-RAE is 100% Irish but his roots are more Cork than Kerry, according to a DNA test conducted on last night’s Late Late Show.
For the St. Patrick’s Day edition of the show, RTÉ enlisted Ancestry.ie to test the DNA of some well-known Irish faces to see how green their blood is.
While it may have just been a bit of fun for Maura Derrane, Eamon Dunphy and Jason Byrne, there was perhaps a bit more on the line for the Kerry TD.
The political dynasty established by his late father Jackie Healy-Rae is perhaps most famous for being from within the Kingdom, so anything other than that would be a disappointment for Healy-Rae.
The news didn’t start off too well for him when it was revealed that his DNA is more associated with Cork than Kerry.
In fact, the DNA testing suggested that Dunphy has more Kerry blood in him than Healy-Rae.
It got much better after that though.
Despite Ancestry.ie’s Mike Mulligan explaining that it’s incredibly rare for someone’s DNA to be 100% Irish, that’s exactly the case for Healy-Rae.
“When I was showing to the science team, they were looking and said it’s one of the most Irish we’ve seen,” Mulligan said.
The way we compare is we compare it to a reference of gold-standard Irish people and he’s exactly like them. He’s exactly the kind of person that we could compare other people to.
So there, Michael Healy-Rae is 100% Irish. Says science.
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