In October each year, Ireland celebrates National Grandparents Day. This year, the country will commemorate this special day on Wednesday 6th October. After all, if we have Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, why not also dedicate a whole day to grandparents? National Grandparents Day is an annual celebration of the special relationship between grandparents and […]

When performing paternity testing for siblings, we can establish whether or not brothers and sisters share the same mother and father, or whether they share either their mother or their father. Full siblings each have the same biological parents, while half-siblings only share one biological parent – either the mother or the father. How does […]

An American couple who ordered an at-home DNA test as a joke were devastated when they received their results. Donna and Vanner Johnson, from Utah, had hoped to learn more about their backgrounds when they ordered the home DNA testing kit. Yet when they got their results, they were dismayed to learn that their 12-year-old […]

AlphaBiolabs’ prenatal paternity testing is non-invasive, risk-free and available in Dublin. The test can determine whether a man is a baby’s biological father before the baby is born. It can be performed as early as 6 weeks after conception (or 8 weeks after the last period). Because a baby inherits DNA from both of its […]

Solicitors acting for a woman who was given back the wrong child after temporarily leaving her infant daughter in the care of nuns at the St Patrick’s Guild adoption society are expected to begin legal proceedings. Helen Maguire’s story emerged in the aftermath of revelations last year that St Patrick’s Guild had incorrectly registered at […]

DNA is valuable. Last year, the pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline announced a $300 million deal with 23andMe to use home DNA results from its 5 million customers for new drug research. At the end of last year, Genomics Medicine Ireland announced it intended to gather DNA from 400,000 people in Ireland to research new medical treatments. […]

The remains of two people who went missing in Dublin in the 1990s have been identified using new DNA testing methods. Margaret Glennon, aged 49, from Baldoyle in Dublin went missing in May 1995. Her family made national appeals at the time and have carried out many searches over the years to locate her body. […]

Can I get my DNA test for free on the HSE? This is a question that our Customer Services team get asked regularly. DNA testing, including Paternity tests, aren’t available on the Health Service Executive (HSE). Some testing companies will offer cut-price tests, but you’ll need to then pay a high fee to get them […]

During his 2-day visit to Ireland, the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, apologised for the sexual abuse by representatives of his church to thousands of people gathered at Phoenix Park in Dublin. “We ask forgiveness for the abuses in Ireland”, he told the crowd. He listed a litany of abuses including clerical sex […]

An Ennis judge has said that men questioning the paternity of babies and demanding DNA tests “is an unfair weapon to pull out” in child maintenance cases. Judge Patrick Durcan made his comment in the Family Law Court where a man has stopped paying maintenance for a child after questioning if he is the father […]