Thirty children from Chernobyl have arrived in Ireland for the Christmas holidays.
The group landed into Dublin Airport from Belarus, after being flown there by the Chernobyl Children International charity.
They were greeted with Christmas carols sung by Dublin Airport staff as they came into the arrivals hall in Terminal 1.
Among the Irish host families at the airport to welcome the children for their two-week stay were Breda and Michael Aylward.
They will host their "Belarussian grandchild" Milana for the first time.
Seven-year-old Milana's mother Karyna visited Ireland from 1994 until adulthood, and stayed with the Aylwards in Carlow on many occasions.
She lost contact with the family but later found them again through Facebook.
Breda and Michael have visited Karyna and her daughter in Belarus and this is Milana's first trip to her "Irish grandparents".
A group of 30 young people from Belarus affected by the Chernobyl disaster have arrived to spend Christmas in Ireland pic.twitter.com/vyBXegNZvz
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) December 19, 2019
Milana has kidney disease and is an example of the third generation of children that have been affected by Chernobyl.
Chernobyl Children International says that the youngsters, some of whom are orphaned and others who have been abandoned by parents who were unable to cope with their illness or disabilities, live in an orphanage in a remote village 175km from Chernobyl.
Other children still live in the so-called "exclusion zone".
The orphanage was discovered by Irish volunteers working with CCI in the early 1990s and since then the charity says it has been transformed into a "world class child care centre".
Belarus was the country most affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the charity has given €107 million in humanitarian and medical aid to communities and children from Belarus, Ukraine and Western Russia since then.
Children from the orphanage come to Ireland for rest and recuperation with host families and this group is among more than 26,000 children from Belarus arriving with the CCI for "life prolonging holidays" during the summer and at Christmas since the disaster.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
The charity's CEO, Adi Roche, was at Dublin Airport for the arrivals.
She said: "This makes our Christmas.There is nothing more magical than this moment for us in CCI. This is the true meaning of Christmas. It's about family and giving."
Ms Roche added that "Irish people have been reaching out to these children for 33 years and their enthusiasm and kindness never waivers. Irish families from all over the country unite here every Christmas to show love to abandoned and orphaned children who live with huge physical and intellectual disabilities."
