NORTHERN IRELAND
BBC NI
By Vincent Kearney
BBC News NI Home Affairs Correspondent
Paddy Monaghan was sent from a children’s home in Northern Ireland to Australia in the 1940s.
As a boy, he was told all his relatives were dead. Now, after more than 40 years of searching, he has found them – alive and well in County Fermanagh.
Paddy Monaghan’s face breaks into a wide grin when I ask how it feels to have found his family after more than 40 years of searching.
“It feels great. I’ve always longed to be able to have somebody with my blood in them. I didn’t think it was ever going to happen,” he said.
I first met Paddy in Perth, Australia, while working for BBC Northern Ireland’s Spotlight programme . …
He had visited Ireland, but the Sisters of Nazareth repeatedly told him he had been an orphan and that they could find no records of his mother.
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