WATCH: 'Prejudice and struggle': Joe Kennedy - relative of Bobby and JFK - on why Irish-Americans are so fiercely attached to their homeland

Mr Kennedy – grandson of Bobby Kennedy and grand-nephew of president Robert F Kennedy – was speaking to the News Letter after Joe Biden delivered his speech in Belfast this week.

Dispatched to Northern Ireland to stimulate business links with the US, he was among the speakers preceding president Biden at Ulster UNiversity’s Belfast campus on Wednesday.

He was asked by the News Letter about why Irish-Americans are so fiercely nationalist and attached to their ancestral land of many generations ago.

"I can't speak for all of Irish-America,” he said.

"What I can say is, at least from my own family, our story of emigration from ireland to the US is one that has obviously been passed down to me it's one we hold dear.

"It's also a quintessential American story – [though] it's not a unique American story.

"When they arrived in my case in Boston, Massachusetts, it wasn't a community that was greeted with open arms.

"It was met with an awful lot of challenges, prejudice, and struggle. But it was one that ultimately enjoyed enormous success.

"Part of that narrative coincides with the American story about America - prospects and opportunities.”

He was also asked about the perception among some unionists that Mr Biden is unsympathetic to their cause, and over-sympathetic to nationalists.

Has he ever got that sense?

"In my conversations with president Biden about Northern Ireland, his observations have always been the same, his statements have always been the same: it's about making sure the US is committed to the people of Northern Ireland - full stop.”

He said that “economic benefits are cross-community” and that the “future has to be shared".

Below is a link to Mr Biden’s full address to Northern Ireland, recorded at 1pm, Wednesday, April 12, 2023.

He spoke for about 20 minutes, not always very audibly, about his ancestral roots in Britain and Ireland and about his hopes for peace in Northern Ireland.

You can watch the whole thing here and judge for yourself:

• WATCH / LISTEN for yourself: US president Joe Biden's full uncut address to Northern Ireland 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement

More:

• Who exactly was Freddie Scappaticci: the IRA executioner and alleged prize informant from its own informer-hunting 'Nutting Squad'?