When I was in County Kerry last October, I tried to find out a little bit about my Tagney ancestors. There is a tailor shop in Tralee that was formerly operated by a Dennis Tagney who died some years ago. I had a very brief conversation with his widow: she has a son John. She said all the Tagneys were tradesmen.
My gr.gr.grandfather was a shoemaker in Killarney. He took his family to London, but that was not until the late 1850s.