Family asks for help to fund vital equipment

BY JULY of 2001, five-year--old Edel Ryan had made a few introductory visits to Ballagh National School in Tipperary, preparing herself for the big day in September when she would join the ranks of the junior infants.

But fate was to deal a cruel hand and when Edel eventually made her way through the school doors as a fully fledged pupil, it was in a wheelchair.

That July brought horror for the Ryan family of Clonoulty, a few miles west of Cashel, when Edel, her mother Joan and little brother Tomás were involved in a road crash with a dumper truck.