At last, Adi gets her reward - Freedom of Cork

ADI ROCHE, founder of the charity, Chernobyl Children International, is to be given the Freedom of Cork.

It is not before time. If Ms Roche had been born in the United Kingdom it is likely she would have been honoured by Queen Elizabeth. Indeed, she has received a number of international awards for her work, among them the World of Children Award presented last November in New York.

The decision by the city council to make the award at a meeting on Tuesday was proposed by Lord Mayor Chris O’Leary and received almost unanimous support.

Last January Mr O’Leary saw for himself the ongoing fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster when Ms Roche took a delegation from Cork to the city of Pripyat in Ukraine which was built to serve the nearby nuclear power plant.

It included the lord mayor and the chief executive of Cork City Council, Ann Doherty. Pripyat once had a population of 50,000 but it is now a ghost town with not a single inhabitant.

For the past three decades, Adi Roche has kept the name Chernobyl in the public consciousness and while public interest in the disaster has waned at times, her commitment to the children affected by it never has.

As well as raising money, her charity has also helped almost 25,000 children from the region surrounding Chernobyl benefit from holidays in Ireland over the past 30 years.

The award is well deserved.