The late US senator Robert F Kennedy was inducted into the Irish America magazine Hall of Fame at a ceremony held on Friday at the inaugural Kennedy Summer School in County Wexford.

The award was presented to his grandson, Robert Kennedy III, a filmmaker and writer,  who spoke of his family's links with Wexford and Ireland.

“I’ll accept this award and deliver it to my grandmother on behalf of her and my uncles and aunts and my many, many cousins. I’ll try to bring as many of them as I can back here next year and, if we get a third of them, we’re going to need a bigger room," he said, according to the Irish Times.

He also said he looked forward to next year's 50th anniversary of President John F Kennedy's visit to Ireland.

Mr. Kennedy said his family were "very close to our Irish heritage" and said it was "so cool" to visit the Kennedy homestead in nearby Dunganstown, where there were still people who remembered his granduncle President Kennedy's visit there in 1963.

“Even though I wasn’t alive during it, it makes me feel close to it,” he said.