€7.5m centre for ‘amazing staff and services’

Stephen Ryan, who cannot cycle or play sport and who is afraid of slippery leaves and wet manhole covers, is over the moon that Enable Ireland has finally got the kind of facility it needs to match the “amazing staff” and the “amazing services” the charity provides.

Stephen, who has broken more than 50 bones in his lifetime on account of agenetic disorder known as osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), or brittle bone disease, was in and out of the Lavanagh Centre in Ballintemple — formerly the Cork Spastic Clinic — throughout his childhood.