THEY didn't look sick. They just looked like a plane load of healthy, if somewhat palefaced children, a little shy, a little nervous, and timidly excited about the prospect of a month's holiday in Ireland.
But the children who touched down in Dublin Airport yesterday for a holiday of a lifetime are victims of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident, the worst in the history of nuclear power generation. Aged between seven and 12, they are suffering from a range of health problems from the early stages of thyroid cancer to immune system deficiencies.
Over the next five days, some 1,500 children will be airlifted from Belarus and western Russia to Dublin and Shannon airports by the Chernobyl Children's Project. Some 1,200 will remain in Ireland, North and South, while the other 300 will travel to the UK and US. They will stay with more than 800 host families in the project's 65 outreach groups.
The group includes children from the radiation zone, refugees now living outside the zone, orphans in state care and the children of those who were conscripted to contain the reactor accident.
Radiation levels in Belarus and western Russia increase during the summer when forest fires and the heat from the sun stir up radiation contaminated topsoil. This means that children still living in the radiation zone are susceptible to secondary contamination.
Doctors in Belarus estimate that one month spent in Ireland breathing clean air and eating uncontaminated food can add two years to an affected child's life, according to the Chernobyl Children's Project.
The project's executive director, Ms Adi Roche, said the children are "ambassadors of their own tragedy" and a "constant reminder" of the accident which affected some four million children.