"I felt obligated to return to the front line at home to help with the crisis"

A Clonalvy man has spoken of how his girlfriend quit her job as a doctor in Australia to help in Ireland’s fight against Covid 19.  
 
Eoin McGuinness (29)  returned home from Brisbane just over a week ago so that his partner Siobhán Farrell (27) could answer Ireland’s call to be a frontline worker. 
 
Longford native Siobhán who studied medicine in UCD had been working in Caboolture Hospital outside of Brisbane in the Emergency Department as a senior house officer, a junior position as a graduate doctor, but packed up her whole life ‘in a matter of days’ to offer her expertise in Ireland. 
 
The couple had been living in Australia for a little over a year and had plans to stay longer but when the government pleaded for all healthcare professionals to ‘be on call for Ireland’ the doctor they ‘didn’t think twice about coming home.’
 
“We were going to come home later in the year but when this all happened everything changed,” said business owner Eoin.
 
“Siobhán was really passionate about coming home and helping the healthcare system here.  
 
“I was getting a little panicky when the whole situation really got serious in Australia and I got in contact with the Department of Foreign Affairs and they basically told us to get home as soon as we could,” he added.

 
Healthcare professional Siobhán said she felt ‘compelled’ to help in the nation’s fight against coronavirus as she explains:
 
“I saw the struggle of friends and colleagues at home and wanted to help out so I applied.
 
“I had a great time and experience in Australia but I felt obligated to return to the front line at home to help with the crisis.
 
“I worked on suspected covid cases in Brisbane. There was a 'fever clinic' outside the hospital where I saw patients with symptoms of covid who were swabbed and treated according to the protocol.
 
“I’m still waiting to find out what hospital I will be working in once we have finished quarantine.”
 
But despite Siobhán's brave sacrifice to pack up her life, their journey to get home was a ‘nightmare’ according to Eoin.
 
“We had four cancelled flights and we still haven’t received a cent of it back, it’s very frustrating.
 
“We eventually got home last Saturday 4th April and it took us 48 hours in all.
 
“We were living in Brisbane so we flew to Sydney then we had a 23-hour flight from Sydney to London and we had a stopover in Singapore where we weren’t allowed to get out of the plane.
 
“Then we were stuck in Heathrow for another 15 hours to get the next flight home, it was a long two days.

Eoin and Siobhán enjoying life in Australia 

 “We are about €8-000 out of pocket in cancelled flights.
 
“We are probably in a better situation than some people because we had some savings and we had to dip into that numerous times to get flights but every time we’d book something it would cancel a couple of days later.
 
“Only that the Irish and British government struck a deal with British Airways and Qatar Airways for chartered flights for UK and Irish citizens we wouldn’t have gotten home.”
 
The Department of Foreign affairs were a huge help according to Eoin.
 
“The scariest time for us was when Emirates stopped flying because they are the biggest airline in the world and once they stopped flying everyone else started to follow suit.
 
“A couple of people were in really dire situations, a lot of Irish stuck there with nowhere to go.
 
“The Department of Foreign Affairs were brilliant; they were really pro active in getting in contact with people.  
 
Entrepreneur Eoin who owns Crann, a company that creates sustainably made sunglasses and watches said the couple is ‘delighted’ to be home and waiting for the fourteen say isolation period to be up.
 
“We are thrilled to be finally home. I can’t wait to get back to work and I'm so proud of Siobhán for what she is doing. I'm also very excited to meet my baby niece for the first time when things get back to normal.”