Sisters make it home from Oz to answer Ireland's call

Eilís Ryan

When the Irish government put out its ‘On Call for Ireland’ plea asking health professionals not working with the HSE to register to help the country through the coronavirus crisis, it went around the world.

In Australia, an estimated 200 Irish doctors and nurses handed in their notice and put their own plans on hold to come home to aid their native country in its hour of need.

Among them were Castlepollard twins Nicola and Avril Fagan, both highly-qualified nurses – and at 13.04 on Monday, the sisters finally got to set foot on the tarmac of Dublin airport, ready to self-isolate for two weeks, and then join the thousands doing battle against the dreaded virus that by Sunday night had claimed 46 lives in this country, and worldwide, 35,000.

Nicola and Avril’s bid to “answer Ireland’s call” proved fraught with difficulty: there was confusion over what flights were and weren’t going; panic as one airline announced it wasn’t flying; shock as the original flight they booked was cancelled, worry as another airline quoted them $12,500 apiece to get home – and as the hours ticked by, country after country along the way started either closing their borders to inbound flights or introducing stringent quarantine rules for people arriving there.

Nicola and Avril – both former Westmeath and Lough Lene Gaels camogie stars – were determined, however:

“When Leo Varadkar and Simon Harris came out and said they wanted people to go on call for Ireland and when we heard that first and second year nurses were having their exams brought forward so that they could go out on the wards to take on patients, and that retired nurses and doctors were being brought back, we had a long talk with each other and we said to ourselves: “This isn’t good enough, we need to go home’,” said the sisters on the phone from Melbourne last week as they tried desperately to figure out a way of getting home

The two had been just about to do the 88 days of agri-work required of immigrants seeking a second year’s work visa in Australia.

“We said: ‘There is no point in us going and working on a farm picking bananas or picking fruit when we should be going home to help.

“We would be doing ourselves a disservice and we will be doing our country a disservice. And we would be making a mockery of our specialist training.

“So we decided then that we would pack our bags. We packed our bags overnight.”

Nicola and Avril, daughters of Patrick and Marie Fagan, studied nursing at Trinity College, Dublin, and did their practical training and internships at Tallaght Hospital before going on to a graduate programme at the Mater private hospital where both qualified in theatre nursing, Nicola in the anaesthetic and recovery side and Avril as a scrub and scout nurse.

“We are three years qualified, so we decided we would go to Australia for a year or two. Our idea was to work for a few weeks, then maybe travel for a few weeks, so we have worked in the main emergency hospitals over here and in private hospitals.”

The two were offered sponsorship by three big hospitals, but fortunately for Ireland, they had already decided not to tie themselves in to the long-term contracts that would have entailed, and opted instead for the three-month agri stint.

The Fagan sisters have the height of praise for both the Irish embassy and consular staff and the Department of Health officials who worked with them and the other young Irish medical professionals scrambling to find a way home.

In the end, their flights were pricey but the two dismissed that, saying their priority was just to make it back to help Ireland face the Covid-19 challenge.

What made the delay in getting out of Australia even more frustrating was the fact that the country was slow in accepting how serious the crisis was. In fact, revealed the sisters, while the country announced “restrictions” last week, hair salons and beauty salons were allowed to remain open on the basis that they were “essential services”; meanwhile, also, huge amounts of elective surgery were still going on, including cosmetic procedures.

The sisters believe Australia is facing a major crisis: when Ireland was already introducing school closures and other measures aimed at stemming the progress of the virus, there was practically no awareness of it in Australia.

The sisters admit that as recently as St Patrick’s Day, they, like most of the Irish out there, were happily partying, largely unaware the seriousness of the developing crisis: “There was nothing here. We heard nothing. We were all still partying – and I think that’s why the Irish are now so worried; we were all going out, having a good time. It’s not that we weren’t taking it seriously, but when you’re on a working holiday, you are not really looking at the news.”

Now, the graph is taking a swift upward swing in Australia, and there is a fear emerging that by April 4, it will have no spare ICU beds. An anaesthetist there told them he believes Australia could become the epicentre of the outbreak.

Once the ‘on call for Ireland’ appeal was launched, the Irish sat up and took notice, and Facebook pages sprang up connecting young medical professionals in Australia who were trading tips on what route was most likely to get them home successfully.

In opting to respond to Ireland’s plea, the approximately 200 who volunteered to come home were leaving behind salaries that in the sisters’ case, were approximately three times greater than what they earned in Ireland – and the shifts were far shorter.

“But we want to be at home to help on Ireland’s front line,” say the two.

“We have to go into quarantine – we probably won’t see our families for months; we have two grandmothers: we don’t want to risk them.

“They can put us anywhere: in a tent in a car park – anywhere. We want to work.”