Tipperary man Kieran Lyons and other thalidomide survivors are 'still here, still waiting'

He has been battling against the odds all his life, and having come this far he’s not prepared to give up the struggle.
Clonmel man Kieran Lyons is one of 40 Irish thalidomide victims who are seeking compensation and an apology for the delays in alerting women to the drug’s effect on unborn children.
“We deserve to be recognised before we die and receive redress for a life we didn’t choose for ourselves,” he says.
“We’ve been fobbed off for long enough. It’s not fair.”
Thalidomide was a drug manufactured by German company Grunenthal and was available in Ireland in the late 1950s and early 1960s for pregnant women badly affected by morning sickness.
It was initially hailed as a wonder drug for pregnant women but in 1961 the manufacturer became aware of concerns about the effect the drug had on the unborn child, and in January 1962 warnings were sent to doctors and pharmacies in Ireland. However, the Department of Health didn’t issue a public warning until June 1962.
In any event, such concerns and warnings came too late for Peggy and Davy Lyons and their son Kieran, who was born on March 5, 1960 without fingers and toes, after Peggy had taken the drug. His left foot is clubbed and he also has problems with his hearing.
Kieran Lyons remembers being referred to as the thalidomide baby.
“At the time it was considered shameful to have a child like that. It was frowned upon,” he says.
In a futile attempt to improve his deformities, he underwent 35 medical operations from the time he was a baby until he was 15.
“I honestly feel I was butchered for most of my younger life for no obvious reasons. It was senseless,” he says.
He describes one of those operations, intended to give him a grip in his right hand but which didn’t work, as “an absolute disaster”.
He spent most of his childhood in and out of hospital, including a year-and-a-half in a full body cast in the orthopaedic hospital in Croom, Co Limerick. He had a caliper splint on his leg “for years” when he was young.
At one stage it was suggested that his right arm should be amputated, and he begged his mother not to let the doctors cut his arm off. Fortunately, it was one procedure that didn’t go ahead. As a child he was given the last rites 13 times.
Life took a further downturn when his late father left home when he was nine, leaving his mother and his four siblings to fend for themselves at a time when there were no supports for those left in such a dire situation.
In order to make ends meet, his mother secured a job with the domestic staff in St Luke’s psychiatric hospital in Clonmel, and he says the hospital management were very good in accommodating her with time off to bring him to his regular hospital appointments.
“The woman is a saint, God rest her. I don’t know how she did it,” he says.
To add insult to injury, and to her great surprise and shock his mother was told he wasn’t a thalidomide victim, when the evidence was plain to see, and even after the world’s most renowned specialist in the field claimed he was over 90 per cent sure that he is a thalidomide victim.
When his mother looked for the medical records relating to the circumstances of his birth they couldn’t be found. He says his mother was made out to be a liar, and that greatly affected him and his siblings.
“I’m called the unacknowledged, one of ten people in the country whose papers can’t be found or that have been destroyed.”
He went to school at St Mary’s CBS in Clonmel, where he says the Christian Brothers “didn’t show any mercy”. He recalls one incident shortly after he was discharged from one of his many spells in hospital, when he was slapped on the hand and the stitches inserted where he had been operated upon were broken.
After St Mary’s he attended the local technical school, which he says was “like heaven” compared to St Mary’s. He took an interest in mechanical drawing classes, following in the footsteps of his father, who was a mechanic.
However shortly before his Inter Cert (as what is now the Junior Cert was known at the time) he was sent to a rehabilitation centre in Dublin, which he describes as “a horrible place”.
“It was pointless because all we were doing was making brackets for television aerials and drilling holes into cooker rings. I didn’t learn anything at all and was lonely up there.”
He moved home when a rehabilitation centre in Clonmel opened, and where the late Sean Roche - the father of Chernobyl Children’s Project International founder and CEO Adi Roche - was in charge of engineering.
Kieran Lyons was fascinated with welding and taught his fellow trainees how to weld. However he was unable to secure a job anywhere, because of concerns about insurance expressed by prospective employers.
“The stints in Rehab were futile. They should have left me at school. When I was young I wanted to be an engineer.”
However, in the 1980s he carved a niche for himself as a DJ, one of the best-known and most popular in the county and beyond, after he had been encouraged by his friend and fellow DJ Sham Lee, who performed at discos with Paddy Reidy in an act known as Tom and Jerry.
Kieran Lyons says that he only started to receive disability benefits six years ago. He is also a latecomer to the Irish Thalidomide Association (ITA) campaign for redress, only learning about it through a friend.
To this day he suffers from pain in his joints, especially his shoulders, and has arthritis in his hands.
He says that in the 1970s some thalidomide survivors received lump payments up to a maximum of €20,000, but that he has “never received a penny”.
The ITA, which is seeking proper redress and an apology, especially for the mothers of those affected, staged a peaceful demonstration at the Dáil in November, when white roses were placed at the gates of the Dáil to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the introduction of the drug to Ireland.
The association’s slogan is “Still here, Still waiting”. The company that provided the drug issued an apology in November but it’s unclear whether it extends to Irish survivors.
Having been lobbied by some 40 TDs and Senators, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly has agreed in principle to meet the victims.
Kieran Lyons says that Tipperary TD Mattie McGrath is backing their campaign, and that the people of Clonmel have been a great support, while the story has received extensive coverage in the media.
Still Broken, the title of a poem about his life that he posted on Facebook, received a very positive reaction from people all over the country, as well as in the United States and Greece (see below).
“Because we’re not thousands of people, they’re ignoring us.
“This situation isn’t of the present Government’s making but they can finish this for once and for all, and let us get on with our lives,” he says.

Tipperary village being transformed with some Golden memories and hard work