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Barack Obama Plaza

Motorway service area in Moneygall, Ireland

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ55604878 ↗
Source-derived summary

Barack Obama Plaza is a motorway service area on the R445 road at Junction 23, just off the M7 motorway in County Tipperary, Ireland. It is beside the village of Moneygall, which is just across the county border in County Offaly, and is accessed using the Junction 23 slip roads. It is named after U.S. president Barack Obama, whose third great-grandfather, Falmouth Kearney, lived in Moneygall and emigrated to the US in 1850. The Plaza cost €7 million to construct and opened on 30 May 2014. An Obama museum–visitor centre opened on the following 4 July. The Plaza is owned and operated by Pat McDonagh and his wife Una McDonagh.

Facilities

The service station, operating under the Circle K brand, has 26 petrol pumps across two forecourts, offering unleaded petrol, diesel, MGO (marine gas oil), diesel exhaust fluid, and LPG (liquefied petroleum gas). Charging stations include a fast-charge ESB electric car charge point.

In addition to fuel supplies, there are a variety of food outlets, including Supermac's, Papa John's Pizza, Mac's Place Bakery and Carvery, Bewleys coffee and a Spar shop. The Plaza also includes a visitor centre that provides information on Obama's family connections to Moneygall, where his great-great-great-grandfather lived until emigrating in 1850.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Barack Obama Plaza” as motorway service area in Moneygall, Ireland. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Barack, Obama and Plaza.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1850, 2014—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Barack, Obama and Plaza providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Barack Obama Plaza”, the useful work is to connect “motorway service area in Moneygall, Ireland” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q55604878. Authority coordinates are 52.885, -7.945. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1850 and 2014.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Barack Obama Plaza” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.