Chernobyl children arrive in Ireland as Adi Roche warns of big fall in funds

THERE HAS been a 75-80 per cent drop in the response to the Christmas appeal of the Chernobyl’s Children’s Project, chief executive Adi Roche said yesterday.

She was speaking before the arrival of over 80 children from Belarus for a three-week break with host families across the State.

She would not contemplate cutting a single Chernobyl project and would sell her own house if she had to, she said on RTÉ radio.

The economic impact has been “savage” here but they are “at the bottom of the food chain” and “off the Richter scale”, she said.

The real wealth is the “abundant heart and spirit of the Irish people” and the families were taking the children “despite or because of the recession”.

The children are part of the long-term care programme for the project which works with people in the areas affected by the 1986 nuclear accident in Belarus.

Just 50 children were supposed to come but Ms Roche was asked to take 30 more because there was not enough food in the institution. While it is minus 30 degrees in Belarus, the heating is turned down, she said.

The star of an Oscar-winning documentary was among those to arrive to cheers at Dublin airport following a two-day journey. Sasha Haldayeu was featured in the documentary Chernobyl Heart and, speaking on behalf of all the children, said “Thank you for taking us Irish families.”

There were tears, smiles and hugs as eight-year-old Maryna Tsitove and her host Andrea Keogh (27) saw each other. It is the fifth visit for Maryna, who has cerebral palsy and is unable to speak. However she is “well able to say what she wants using non-verbal gestures”, Ms Keogh said.

Maryna lives in an orphanage and they first met when Ms Keogh was renovating it. “I was devastated. I hadn’t expected it to be so bad,” she said. “She will fit into my life and hang with my friends, go for lunches and swimming. She will see the doctor and dentist and be outdoor as much as possible.”

John and Ann Casey from Clonmel have been taking members of the same seven-sibling family since 1996. Yesterday, sisters Liudmila, Zinaida and Natallia arrived. They live in a shelter and are separated from their brother who is in an orphanage .

The Caseys are short €7,000 to place them all together in a foster home in Belarus. They got a permit to raise money in a street collection the day Clonmel flooded. They still hope they can be reunited in a foster home next month.