How teen Ella came so close to finding her Irish father
THE Australian teenager desper- ately seeking her Irish father has revealed that she came frustrat- ingly close to discovering who he e was on a trip here two years ago.
Last week, the Irish Mail On Sun- day revealed the story of 19-yearold Sydney girl Ella Lanigan’s attempts to track down her father, who she believes to be a man n in his fifties called Andy, from m Co. Meath.
She revealed how he had a one- night-stand with her mother Melissa after they met in the legendary Scruffy Murphy’s pub in the Australian city on March 11, 2001. And now she reveals how tantalisingly close she came to locating him in 2018.
She said: ‘My mum and I did an ancestry DNA test which threw up some Irish relations. On my mum’s side that was no great shock as her grandfather was Irish, but there was one third cousin, a woman, who showed up on my test and not mum’s.
‘As soon as I saw that I thought,
“We’ve got it, we have cracked the case” and we immediately got in touch through the internet and had numerous phone calls with her.
‘The end result of all that was that mum and I flew to Ireland in 2018 and met up with her and some of her family, but the connection was just too distant for them to be able to pin down a name for me.
‘We ‘W searched hd church h h records d and d trawled through graveyards to see if we could strengthen the link but had no luck, we had a great time and an met lovely people but ultimately ma didn’t achieve the outcome we wanted.
‘The ‘T fact we were only third cousins meant it was too hard to make any an firm link to my dad or his family. fa It was so frustrating because be I felt we could have made the th breakthrough.’
The T determined teenager is now considering co trying to force open another an door, and this time it’s much mu closer to home.
‘I ‘ have always known that on the night nig he met my mother, Andy was with wi a friend who he was living with wi at the time, as he was on a business bu trip and now it turns out I am living just a five-minute walk from fro where they were living back then,’ th she said.
‘I live by the beach in Sydney and they were living in a suburb called Cremorne which is really close by.
‘The problem is I don’t know the friend’s name, though I do believe he was Irish too, and because of all the help and encouragement I have got from people in Ireland since my first social media post I am going to explore that avenue again.
‘If I can find that friend, then I’m sure he’ll recognise me as Andy’s daughter as I look very like him, red hair, freckles and all.
‘It’s a long shot, I know, but this whole thing is a long shot anyway, I’m determined to see it through.
‘Friends have asked me what I expect at the end of it all and the truth is I don’t quite know. I guess I expect my dad to have his own life and family and that’s something I definitely don’t want to disrupt.
‘My real hope is to find out, once and for all, who my dad is and if I get really, really lucky, to meet him.’
‘We trawled through graveyards, but no luck’