During tonight’s Claire Byrne Show, the host received the results of a DNA kit revealing some interesting facts about her roots.
These exact types of results are being used to reunite families across the globe and solve murder cases, and one guest described the shocking story of meeting her real mum this way.
Dolores joined the host in the studio during the segment and explained that just six weeks after her mum's death she discovered the woman who raised her was not in fact her biological mother.
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She said months later they also found out that there was no adoption agency operating in Ireland at the time, and after years of research discovered that a priest and a doctor had deliberately falsified her records behind her biological mother’s back.
Explaining her unique experience, Dolores said: “When I was 49 - about five years ago - my mother died, and about six weeks after her death, I discovered that she wasn’t my mother. She had taken the secret to the grave.
“I had been adopted into this family but I was unaware and the second shock was when I discovered that there was no adoption agency.
“A priest and a doctor had deliberately falsified my record without my birth mother’s knowledge, so I had nothing, I know who I am because of DNA. I have an identity purely down to DNA.”
Speaking about her journey, she said: “I started off with a fourth cousin in the States so that’s why it took so long, and then I was getting closer matches.
“For two years I sat with a laptop in bed because it becomes so addictive and it would be midnight and I would give up.
“You’re writing to people you match with, so total strangers - some shut it down or you’re left waiting for a response and it doesn’t come but you meet some amazing people.”
After meeting her biological mother, she says: “It has changed my life, and enhanced my life.
“Only on Saturday just gone I was in my mother’s house with my brother, her sister, and brother who I’m so fond of now and they had American visitors over and they were genealogists.
“So we looked at a file that went back to the 17th century on all my ancestors and to me, it meant so much.”
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