Brothers’ drive racks up €250,000

THREE brothers returned home yesterday after spending five months driving halfway round the world to raise €250,000 for the Cystic Fibrosis Association.

The youngest of the three, Darragh Crowley, 22, a third-year genetics student at Trinity College Dublin, suffers from cystic fibrosis.

Medical tests show that Darragh’s lungs can only work at 30% full functioning efficiency and he may eventually need a heart and lung transplant. He and his twin brothers, Cian and Shane, 29, came up with the idea for Drive for Life a year before finalising their dream on March 11 when they set off from Melbourne in Australia.

Cian took time out from his job as financial management consultant with BearingPoint for the marathon drive, while Shane, who had been working as an architect in Melbourne for the past three years, provided the land cruiser.

The twin brothers each raised the 10,000 for the fundraising drive, while Darragh was funded by the CF Association.

Because of his medical condition, Darragh was advised not to attempt the climb to base camp at Mount Everest in April, so he returned home and sat his exams before meeting up with his brothers again in Iran at the beginning of June.

Just three weeks into the journey, war broke out in Iraq, but the brothers carried on driving through Indonesia, Pakistan and Iran, where only essential travel was advised by the British Foreign Office. Travelling through tribal areas of Pakistan turned out to be a nerve-wracking experience and the most dangerous part of the trip. “A couple of times dodgy characters armed with Kalashnikovs would try and flag us down, but we just put the foot to the floor and kept going,” said Cian. “We were kind of expecting a bullet to come through the back of the car but, fortunately, that did not happen.”

The brothers have already raised just over €200,000 and have planned a number of fundraising events to make up the balance.

The €250,000 will be used by the CF Association of Ireland to fund gene-therapy research and improve CF facilities at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin. More information at: www.driveforlife.ie.