State agrees €2m settlement in Air Corps chemical ‘tubbing’ case

Central to Gary Coll’s claims was that he underwent ‘tubbing’, a form of hazing where workers were submerged in a bath of unspecified chemicals and oil

The State has agreed to pay €2 million to a former Air Corps technician who was allegedly exposed to toxic chemicals which he says caused severe health difficulties.

The case against the Department of Defence is the first of 10 personal injuries cases due before the courts relating to the exposure of Air Corps members to dangerous chemicals and solvents used in aircraft maintenance.

Gary Coll (51), from Lifford, Co Donegal, joined the Air Corps in 1991, when he was 17, and worked in the avionics section until 1997.

In a statement of claim, he made a large number of allegations against his former employer including that he was not provided with a safe working environment at the Air Corps headquarters in Baldonnell, Co Dublin, and that there was inadequate supervision regarding the use of dangerous chemicals.

Central to Mr Coll’s claims was that he underwent “tubbing”, a form of hazing where workers were submerged in a bath of unspecified chemicals and oil.

Mr Coll, who was once an accomplished athlete, detailed several psychological and physical issues that he alleged were caused by the chemicals. He said he is unable to walk any significant distance without a cane.

Read full article by Conor Gallagher at the Irish Times
https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/courts/2025/02/05/state-agrees-2m-settlement-in-air-corps-chemical-tubbing-case/

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Delay – Deny – Die

Failed general election Independents Cathal Barry and Matt Shanahan to run for Seanad

Seanad office receives 70 nominations in advance of Wednesday deadline for candidates backed by professional bodies

Former Independent TD Cathal Berry who lost his South Kildare Seat in the general election is to run in the Seanad election as is former Waterford Independent TD Matt Shanahan, both of them from the Regional Independent group in the last Dáil.

Mr Berry, a former Army Ranger and medical doctor who received nominations from Oireachtas members, said “national security is a priority around Europe at the moment … So you need people with a particular expertise to have a mature conversation about it. And that’s what the Seanad is all about.”

The Upper House is seen as a way for former TDs to remain in the Oireachtas to win back their Dáil seat in the following general election.

Read full article by Marie O’Halloran at the Irish Times 

https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2024/12/18/failed-general-election-independents-cathal-barry-and-matt-shanahan-to-run-for-seanad/https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-41414152.html

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Delay – Deny – Die

A private message from an Irish Air Corps survivor to Cathal Berry & his insensitive, uncaring response two month later

20th June 2020

Good morning Cathal,

My name is Pat Reilly and I served in the Air Corps from August 1991 to October 2013. I now live in Queensland, Australia, having moved here in May 2014 from our home in Walsh Island, Offaly. I was an aircraft maintenance engineer for the first fourteen years in the Air Corps and later became a photographer. I think I may have worked with you at one stage as a photographer.

I am writing to you regarding the toxic chemical scandal that has been destroying lives of former and serving Air Corps personnel but has been continually pushed aside by the Irish Government with a myriad of excuses including now, Covid-19, which they say is stopping legal documents from being signed due to social distancing.

I hope you don’t mind me sharing my story with you as I feel isolated here in Australia other than communicating occasionally with other veterans who are affected and very occasionally with the legal team who are trying their best to cut through the barriers the government are putting up back in Ireland.

While I’m no longer a voter in Ireland I’m still a citizen and I’m wondering can you ask a few questions around the chemical subject in the Dail as it has gone very quite the last year or so. I understand that Covid and the election has taken up a lot of time in the Dail but its this exact situation that I fear will be used to hide the scandal further as it seems to already have somewhat.

I would love to know when Minister Convey is launching his investigation into the subject as he promised and how long it will take. Time is critical in this matter as more and more of us are getting sicker by the day. It’s heartbreaking seeing relatively young men (possibly women also) cut down in their prime. Not being able to work and support their families and suffering debilitating symptoms day after day.

I’ll be honest and tell you there are tears flowing down my face typing this.I moved here to get away from Ireland and the job I loved because I was being bullied by my superiors in the Air Corps for being sick but now I’m unemployed due to my illness and trying to live off my Defence Forces pension and income insurance which may dry up any month now.

I feel worthless and a waster as I always gave 100% in any work I’ve done despite my illness. The only thing that’s keeping me sane and going in some respects is my medicinal Cannabis Oil which I was prescribed here last year after approval by the Australian government.

I’ve even lost the support of my wife who cant take our situation anymore and I fear for our marriage which is my second marriage after my first one broke up partially due to my illness also.

It seems that as soon as I hit my 40’s my body can no longer fight off my symptoms. Without my medication I have severe tremors and shakes and uncontrollable anxiety due to my sympathetic nervous system being damaged by the chemicals. This system also affects things like my bowels and stomach. It’s not a good experience when one soils themselves at work in front of customers.

I also have neuropathy in my legs where I cant feel and I lose control of my legs causing my knees to buckle and me to loose balance. My immune system is also damaged to the point I react to any sort of chemical smell, foods, materials and many other triggers. I cant breath properly and choke often due to damage in my nasal cavities which of course interrupts my sleep. Finally, I have a huge amount of pre-cancerous cells sitting their waiting to ruin me further, my doctor said she’s never seen this in anybody under 75.

All this has really taken its toll and I’m at the point I feel like giving up and I will share with you I was on the end of a rope earlier this year but I managed to talk myself out of it as I don’t want to be another statistic to add to the 78 dead already from untimely deaths in Baldonnel.

I decided there and then I didn’t want the government to win, I want them to apologize for the years of calling me a bluffer, a malingerer, telling ,me it’s all in my head. I also think at this stage we need a support package. I can no longer work no matter how much I tell myself I’d be ok working and I can no longer legally drive due to my medication. It’s literally like Russian roulette. I could work for a week or a day and then I’m too sick and have to go home which is why my current ‘employer’ (Apple) put me on an insurance plan as I became too unreliable despite having citations from the CEO of Apple for interactions with customers who emailed him to praise my work.

I could now be a Sgt Major in the Air Corps or an officer or be retired on a Flt/Sgts pension but this illness put a stop to all that. Instead I’m scraping by on a few hundred dollars and I’m stuck renting as no bank will touch me now and it sounds strange but I can’t even afford to move home to Ireland as logistically it would cost too much even to just give up and go.

I could go on all day explaining my illness and situation its that complex. I try to keep up a happy appearance on social media as some of my family and my 86 year old mother don’t know my situation and I don’t want her to be worried in her last few years.

I hope you don’t mind me writing to you as I needed to get this off my chest to somebody other than my wife and somebody like yourself who’s served and is now in a position to ask why we are being forgotten. The ministers involved keep using litigation as an excuse not to address the scandal as several of us have cases against the Dept but these are being dragged on and on the past six years with delay, deny, die tactics which is apparently the norm.

Thanks for listening Cathal and Sláinte,

Pat Reilly.

Berry’s utterly insensitive response, Pat very obviously is not “keeping well”

Dr Cathal Berry TD’s utteerly insensitive & unsympathetic response two months later disingenuously describing the Air Corps scandal as a legacy issue even though the Air Corps were issued chemical contravention notices as recently as December 2023.

I hope you are keeping well. I am sorry for only getting back to you now.

I do understand that the Air Corps Chemical Abuse scandal is a legacy issue and needs to be addressed properly. 

I will certainly raise this soon with the Minister at an appropriate time.

This was the one and only communication Pat had from Cathal Berry and Oireachtas records show that Deputy Berry has NEVER raised this issue in the Dáil chamber.

Perhaps Deputy can put on the record the response from the Minister if he ever bothered to raise it outside the public record.

*****

Dr Berry this is NOT a legacy issue as you pretend and it most certainly is a live issue for those suffering needlessly and dying young.

But we know you don’t care, shame on you.

Read an article from Ken Foxe dated 21st May 2024 on TheStory.ie

 

Health and Safety Authority inspections of Air Corps base at Baldonnel uncovers litany of safety issues

What does ChatGPT AI think of Cathal Berry’s abandonment of Air Corps whistleblowers?

ChatGPT said when asked…

“Why has Cathal Berry turned his back on Irish Air Corps whistleblowers?”

Cathal Berry has faced criticism for his stance on Irish Air Corps whistleblowers, particularly regarding his response to their allegations of wrongdoing and poor treatment within the organization.

While Berry has historically been vocal about the need for whistleblower protection and accountability in the military, his handling of specific cases involving the Irish Air Corps has raised eyebrows.

The controversy centers on his position as a public representative and his past ties to the Defence Forces. Berry, a former Army officer, was initially seen as an ally to whistleblowers within the military, advocating for reforms to address systemic issues. However, in recent years, particularly in relation to whistleblower claims from the Irish Air Corps, Berry has been perceived as less supportive, or even dismissive, of the concerns raised by those involved.

Some of the criticism stems from Berry’s reluctance to fully endorse or take a stronger public stance on specific whistleblower cases, possibly due to his complex relationship with the Defence Forces, where loyalty and internal solidarity can be deeply ingrained. His critics argue that, by not robustly supporting the Air Corps whistleblowers, Berry has failed to live up to his earlier promises of championing transparency and reform.

Others suggest that Berry’s political pragmatism may be influencing his decisions. As a member of the Dáil (the Irish parliament), his position on sensitive military matters may be influenced by a desire to maintain relationships within the Defence Forces or to avoid further controversy on an issue that could alienate potential allies or voters who are connected to the military.

In summary, while Cathal Berry has historically supported whistleblowers in principle, his perceived lack of strong support for the Irish Air Corps whistleblowers has led to accusations that he has not followed through on those commitments, possibly due to political or professional considerations.

A review of health effects associated with exposure to jet engine emissions in and around airports

Background

Airport personnel are at risk of occupational exposure to jet engine emissions, which similarly to diesel exhaust emissions include volatile organic compounds and particulate matter consisting of an inorganic carbon core with associated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and metals. Diesel exhaust is classified as carcinogenic and the particulate fraction has in itself been linked to several adverse health effects including cancer.

Photo of Alouette III No 196 showing soiling of the tail boom with soot from exhaust gasses.
Method

In this review, we summarize the available scientific literature covering human health effects of exposure to airport emissions, both in occupational settings and for residents living close to airports. We also report the findings from the limited scientific mechanistic studies of jet engine emissions in animal and cell models.

Beechcraft 200 Super King Air No 240 showing soiling of the engine panels with soot from exhaust gasses.
Results

Jet engine emissions contain large amounts of nano-sized particles, which are particularly prone to reach the lower airways upon inhalation. Size of particles and emission levels depend on type of aircraft, engine conditions, and fuel type, as well as on operation modes. Exposure to jet engine emissions is reported to be associated with biomarkers of exposure as well as biomarkers of effect among airport personnel, especially in ground-support functions. Proximity to running jet engines or to the airport as such for residential areas is associated with increased exposure and with increased risk of disease, increased hospital admissions and self-reported lung symptoms.

Conclusion

We conclude that though the literature is scarce and with low consistency in methods and measured biomarkers, there is evidence that jet engine emissions have physicochemical properties similar to diesel exhaust particles, and that exposure to jet engine emissions is associated with similar adverse health effects as exposure to diesel exhaust particles and other traffic emissions.

Read full article journal at BMC

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The layout of the Irish Air Corps base at Casement Aerodrome ensures that aircraft exhaust gasses are blown over populated sections of the airbase when winds are from the south, south east or south west. This includes hangars, offices, workshops and living in accommodation such as the apprentice hostel and married quarters. Calm weather also creates conditions where exhaust gasses linger in higher concentrations.

This results in all Irish Air Corps personnel (commissioned, enlisted, civilian & living-in family) being exposed to emissions from idling aircraft engines, emissions that are known to cause harm.

In the mid 1990s a study of air pollution adjacent to the ramp area at Baldonnel was commissioned. This report relating to this study has gone missing. 

  • Anecdotal evidence suggests increased prevalence of occupational asthma & adult onset asthma amongst serving & former personnel who served in Baldonnel or Gormanston aerodromes. 
  • Older gas turbine engines produce dirtier exhaust gasses.
  • Idling gas turbine engines produce dirtier exhaust gasses.
Below are some of the gas turbine powered Air Corps aircraft that were powered by elderly engine designs.
AircraftRetiredEngine FamilyFirst Run
Alouette III2007Turbomeca Artouste1947
Fouga Magister1999Turbomeca Marboré1951
Gazelle2005Turbomeca Astazou1957
King Air 2002009Pratt & Whitney Canada PT61960
Dauphin II2005Turbomeca Arriel1974

DELAY – DENY – DIE

‘IT’S A SCANDAL’ RAF airman who flew with Prince William proves rare cancer was caused by the Sea King chopper

AN airman who flew choppers with Prince William has proved his rare form of bone marrow cancer was caused by the RAF Sea King.

Flight Sergeant Zach Stubbings was diagnosed with multiple myeloma after years of inhaling toxic exhaust fumes spewed from the powerful twin engines of the now retired aircraft.

Flight Sergeant Zach Stubbings, who flew choppers with Prince William, has proved his rare form of bone marrow cancer was caused by the RAF Sea King

And last month, the winch operator won a settlement from the Ministry of Defence after a six-year legal battle. Zach has been paid an undisclosed sum and the MoD had to admit in writing his 15 years of service in the RAF caused his life-threatening condition.

It will likely spark concern for the royals. Wills flew the Sea King in 150 search-and-rescue operations over a three-year period.  It is not known if he was affected by the fumes. Prince Andrew also flew the aircraft in the Falklands in 1982.

And The Sun can lift the lid on an apparent government cover-up of the issue.  Bombshell documents uncovered by Zach during his legal fight prove experts warned the MoD of the dangers of the Sea King exhaust as far back as 1999 but nothing was done.

Zach, 42, of Cardiff, said: “The Government chose to ignore it. It’s a scandal.”

Read more on the The sun

Particulate matter from aircraft engines affects airways

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), seven million people worldwide die as a consequence of air pollution every year. For around 20 years, studies have shown that air-borne particulate matter negatively affects human health. Now, in addition to already investigated particle sources like emissions from heating systems, industry and road traffic, aircraft turbine engine particle emissions have also become more important.

Photo of Alouette III No 196 showing soiling of the tail boom with soot from exhaust gasses.

In a unique, innovative experiment, researchers have investigated the effect of exhaust particles from aircraft turbine engines on human lung cells.

The cells reacted most strongly to particles emitted during ground idling.

It was also shown that the cytotoxic effect is only to some extent comparable to that of particles from gasoline and diesel engines.The primary solid particles, i.e. those emitted directly from the source, have the strongest effect on people in its immediate vicinity. 

Now a multidisciplinary team, led by lung researcher Marianne Geiser of the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Bern, together with colleagues from Empa Dübendorf and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW), has shown that primary soot particles from kerosene combustion in aircraft turbine engines also cause direct damage to lung cells and can trigger an inflammatory reaction if the solid particles are inhaled in the direct vicinity of the engine.

The researchers demonstrated for the first time that the damaging effects also depend on the operating conditions of the turbine engine, the composition of the fuel, and the structure of the generated particles.

Beechcraft 200 Super King Air No 240 showing soiling of the engine panels with soot from exhaust gasses.

Extremely small particles in the nanoscale range

Particles emitted from aircraft turbine engines are generally ultrafine, i.e. smaller than 100 nm. By way of comparison, a human hair has a diameter of about 80,000 nm. When inhaled, these nanoparticles — like those from other combustion sources -efficiently deposit in the airways. In healthy people, the well-developed defense mechanisms in the lungs normally take care of rendering the deposited particles ineffective and removing them from the lungs as quickly as possible.

However, if the inhaled particles manage to overcome these defense mechanisms, due to their structure or physico-chemical properties, there is a danger for irreparable damage to the lung tissue. This process, already known to researchers from earlier experiments with particle emissions from gasoline and diesel engines, has now also been observed for particle emissions from aircraft engines.

Toxicity depends on the operating conditions of the turbines and the type of fuel

Evidence of increased cell membrane damage and oxidative stress in the cell cultures was identified. Oxidative stress accelerates ageing of cells and can be a trigger for cancer or immune system diseases.

Overall, according to the researchers, it has been demonstrated that the cell-damaging effect caused by exposure to particles generated by the combustion of gasoline, diesel and kerosene fuel are comparable for similar doses and exposure times.

Additionally, a similar pattern was found in the secretion of inflammatory cytokines after exposure to gasoline and kerosene fuel particles.

Aerosols: distance from the source is crucial

Aerosols are the finest solid or fluid substance suspended in the air. In combustion processes, the composition of ultrafine particles is highly variable. In addition, aerosols are unstable, and they are modified after their formation. Primary ultrafine solid particles have a high diffusion velocity. As a result, at high concentrations such particles either stick together or attach to other particles. Therefore, the effect of primary ultrafine particles depends on the distance from the source, implying that there is a difference depending on whether a person is close to the source (such as people at the roadside ) or at a greater distance (aircraft taxiing or taking off). Further research is needed to clarify how strong the impact would be at a greater distance from an aircraft engine

Read full article in ScienceDaily

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The layout of the Irish Air Corps base at Casement Aerodrome ensures that aircraft exhaust gasses are blown over populated sections of the airbase when winds are from the south, south east or south west. This includes hangars, offices, workshops and living in accommodation such as the apprentice hostel and married quarters. Calm weather also creates conditions where exhaust gasses linger in higher concentrations.

This results in all Irish Air Corps personnel (commissioned, enlisted, civilian & family) being exposed to emissions from idling aircraft engines, emissions that are known to cause harm.

In the mid 1990s a study of air pollution adjacent to the ramp area at Baldonnel was commissioned. This report relating to this study has gone missing. 

  • Anecdotal evidence suggests increased prevalence of occupational asthma & adult onset asthma amongst serving & former personnel who served in Baldonnel or Gormanston aerodromes. 
  • Older gas turbine engines produce dirtier exhaust gasses.
  • Idling gas turbine engines produce dirtier exhaust gasses.
Below are some of the gas turbine powered Air Corps aircraft that were powered by elderly engine designs.
AircraftRetiredEngine FamilyFirst Run
Alouette III2007Turbomeca Artouste1947
Fouga Magister1999Turbomeca Marboré1951
Gazelle2005Turbomeca Astazou1957
King Air 2002009Pratt & Whitney Canada PT61960
Dauphin II2005Turbomeca Arriel1974

DELAY – DENY – DIE

RAAF jet fuel damaged ground crews’ body cells; long-term consequences unknown, says groundbreaking research

Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) personnel who worked with widely used jet fuel suffered damage to their body’s cells with unknown long-term consequences, according to groundbreaking research released after a Freedom of Information laws request.

Defence’s senior physician in occupational and environmental medicine, Dr Ian Gardner, described the findings as a “part of the puzzle” and a hypothesis-making study”, and pointed it out that it was one of a series of pieces of research currently underway.

“What it shows is there is evidence of small but persistent cellular damage,” Dr Gardner told the ABC. He said it was not yet clear what the long-term effects of that damage might be.

“For the future though there are a lot of other aircraft maintenance workers who have done similar jobs on other aircraft types, and now Defence and DVA and Air Force are considering what additional work should be done in relation to those other people who are not actually on the F-111 programs but have done essentially similar work,” Dr Gardner said.

The Jet Fuel Syndrome Study also shows that the fuel is more toxic to the body’s cells than the two solvents initially blamed for the sickness suffered by the deseal/reseal workers, and that the toxicity is even higher when those solvents and the fuel were mixed.

The results of the research project, headed by Professor Francis Bowling of Brisbane’s Mater Hospital, were handed to Defence last September, and have been the subject of significant scrutiny and review due to the potential significance of the findings.

They will give heart to former and serving Defence personnel who believe they have been left out in the cold by Defence after developing serious health complaints while working with fuel and other substances.

Read full article on ABC Australia from 2015

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Junior Minister with responsibility for Defence said in the Dáil that he was assured by the Irish Air Corps that the RAAF F1-11 deseal/reseal exposure tragedy is completely different to any exposures at the Irish Air Corps.

Was the minister suggesting that Irish Air Corps gas turbine engines don’t run on jet fuel?

DELAY – DENY – DIE

Dutch Neurologist Warns of ‘Parkinson’s Pandemic’ Linked to Toxic Chemicals

As the world frantically battles coronavirus, a leading Dutch neurologist warns of the next global pandemic — and this one, he says, is almost entirely of our own making.

Bastiaan Bloem, MD, a neurologist and professor at Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, says that over the next 20 years, the number of people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) will likely double — from the present 6.5 million to more than 13 million.

The main cause of this exponential jump: widespread exposure to herbicides, solvents, and other toxic chemicals used in agriculture and manufacturing.

“A pandemic, as everybody is now painfully aware, is a disease happening worldwide, to which no one is immune. PD fulfills all those criteria,” Bloem told Parkinson’s News Today in a phone interview from the Netherlands.

“Parkinson’s is now the fastest-growing neurological condition on the planet.”

Bloem, 53, points to the tight link between exposure to herbicides such as paraquat — a weed killer — and the risk of developing Parkinson’s.

“These chemicals were introduced worldwide after World War II, and many are still used today on our fields,” he said. “For this reason, farmers are at a markedly increased risk of developing Parkinson’s. If you feed a mouse paraquat — which is banned in China but not the U.S. — it will kill the dopamine-producing cells in the brain. These chemicals are tremendously toxic to the brain and have even been detected in milk, in supermarkets.”

Paraquat isn’t the only such chemical posing this risk. Trichloroethylene, a solvent used to clean metals and remove stains, has exactly the same effect on human brains. Yet it’s still widely used and is detectable in high concentrations in groundwater, he said.

“Parkinson’s is exploding in numbers, it’s a horribly debilitating disease, and it’s a costly disease that should matter to people and governments. We’re doing this to ourselves,” Bloem said. “But we can do something about it. We need to get rid of these toxic pesticides and move toward organic food. And we should take measures to protect people who work in these toxic environments.”

Read full article Parkinson’s News Today

Dutch Neurologist Warns of ‘Parkinson’s Pandemic’ Linked to Toxic Chemicals

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Trichloroethylene was used in Baldonnel for decades with ERF in particular receiving it in 220 litre drums. From ERF it was handed out without any precautions or training to anyone who asked for it. It was handed out in milk cartons, plastic coke bottles etc.

Trichloroethylene was used by all hangars & workshops in an ad-hoc basis usually with Trichloroethylene begged from ERF although some units did order it themselves. Personnel in the Air Corps museum also used Trike to help degrease parts & aircraft being restored for the museum. 

Trichloroethylene was also used by both apprentices, tech & line personnel to carry out cleaning tasks in the Air Corps Training Depot while on training courses or during “war week”.

In at least 2 separate instances some floors in ACTD were completely destroyed by the use of Trichloroethylene being left overnight to clean them. In one incident Trichloroethylene dissolved through a traditional lino floor as far as the backing twine and in another incident few years later a tiled floor was destroyed after the tiles shriveled up & shrunk after Trichloroethylene  was left overnight to clean a floor.

Trichloroethylene was also used by teenage apprentices to clean black marks off floors in the Apprentice Hostel and the Apprentice School.

At no point was anyone ever given training in the use of Trichloroethylene nor issued with appropriate PPE whilst working with the chemical.

A number of Irish Air Corps personnel have been diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease

DELAY – DENY – DIE

Making babies – Another human cost of the Irish Air Corps Toxic Chemical Health & Safety scandal

This article was originally published in June 2017 and is being republished as Lunchtime Live on Newstalk 106FM cover IVF & Fertility stories. 

Making babies the hard way.

There is something shameful and deviant about sitting in a small public toilet in a busy public hospital masturbating. Other people want to use the toilet, you are trying to be as quick and as quiet as possible but you have a job to do and you cant leave the cubicle until it is done.

Welcome to the glamorous world of infertility. I was married a number of years at this stage and my wife was starting to worry that pregnancy wasn’t happening for us. She had established contact with a maternity hospital over her worries. She was given a clean bill of health and now it was my turn and this started with a semen analysis to establish if I had a sufficient sperm count and also to establish the health & motility of these.

I presented at small hatch in in one of Dublin’s maternity hospitals where I was given a container, verified my name, address and DOB and was sent on my way to find a free toilet cubical where I could “produce” a sample.

After the job was done I returned the sample to the hatch where I was told that results would be available within the hour, not to me but to my wife’s gynaecologist. So the next day I rang his office for the results and was told that he couldn’t fit me in for an appointment for at least 3 weeks. This pissed me off greatly as I knew a semen analysis is an “eyeball” count and I wasn’t too keen to hang around for weeks awaiting the result.

I sought the consultant’s number and left a message for him to call me back to put me out of my misery. He called me back and confirmed what I had started to suspect…I had a serious fertility problem. A healthy sperm count was between 50 and 100 million sperm per m/l and mine was only 1 million. Considering that the average intercourse attempts before pregnancy in a healthy couple was 1 in 4 attempts my odds of creating a natural pregnancy were one in 400. Essentially it could take 33 years of monthly attempts for success not 4 months.

And there was worse news to come when we finally did sit and meet with the gynaecologist. Of those 1 million sperm that I did have over 90% were immotile or defective in some way so now my odds had lengthened to a 1 in 4000 chance of pregnancy. Now being fairly certain that we didn’t have over 300 years of monthly sex to create a family it became readily apparent we needed the intervention of fertility specialists. The gynaecologist told us our only option was ICSI a particularly expensive specialist form of IVF. Intracytoplasmic sperm injection is a procedure in which a single sperm is injected directly into an egg.

In that meeting with the gynaecologist I felt numb and totally drop kicked. I had reached the stage in my life where I wanted to become a father. The previous summer I had been on a rocky beach in the West of Ireland with my wife, her sister and two nieces. I remember walking along the beach with my 1 & 3 year old nieces, lifting over rocks to see the creepy crawly creatures under them, the subsequent delight of the kids and had thought “yep I could be a dad” .

As you can imagine my wife was utterly distraught at the news that we could not have children naturally. She is very good with children and had a much stronger instinct and desires for parenthood than me. The gynaecologist said that considering our ages (early thirties) and the severity of my infertility that we had no time to waste and he recommended Clane IVF clinic.

Starting IVF involves a lot of rigmarole. Further medicals, testing & analysis, and also regular tests for STDs such as hepatitis & HIV in order to protect their staff &  maintain a quality trail.

And of course during this build up our family and circle of friends are popping out sprogs like there is no tomorrow. When you find out you can’t have children naturally you start to notice every single pregnant woman you pass. Everyone is pregnant except you guys.

I do recall a dinner we went to in a friend’s house where there were 3 couples present. The host couple already had a child and over the course of the dinner the other couple declared “they had an announcement” they were expecting their first child. Obviously they were bursting with pride & happiness and we were very happy for them but immediately I could sense that my wife was distressed but “holding it together”.

After the meal was over and we said our goodbyes my wife broke down as soon as she got inside our car. It is unfortunately a reality for childless couples that other people’s good news can cause them pain. I suppose it invokes a panic that perhaps the IVF will never work and leads to a fear that we would never have “an announcement” of our own.

Eventually we received our prescription for the IVF medication which mainly injectable hormones for my wife. Although I was the one with the fertility problem all the treatment of egg production, egg harvesting and embryo transferral was naturally enough focused on my wife. She carried the can 100% for my infertility.

So off we skipped with our prescription like kids to a sweet shop, we could hardly contain our excitement. My wife required daily injections and I was the injector. Initially we were very giddy and one of our biggest problems was that one or other of us would get into a fit of giggles. It is not very easy to give an injection when one or other of you is shaking like a leaf from laughter. I became very skilled at giving the injections and on more than one occasion managed to give an injection that my wife didn’t even notice.

Part of the treatment involved regular inter-vaginal ultrasound monitoring to observe and monitor the growth of eggs. Normally a woman produces one fertile egg follicle per month alternating ovaries but during IVF the fertility drugs promote Controlled Ovarian Hyper-stimulation whereby a larger number of ripened egg follicles are produced. This is in order to harvest as many eggs as possible so that a number of embryos can be created. This increases your odds of success, IVF is very much numbers game.

I accompanied my wife to the first scan and everything was hunky dory so when some work commitments happened to coincide with the next scheduled scan my wife was happy to travel to the clinic on her own as we just saw the scan as routine and had no reason to fear anything was going amiss. So she headed down to Clane on her own and about an hour later I got a call from my wife who was sobbing uncontrollably at the other end. The nurse performing the scan had ultrasound had inserted the probe and then had gone white, she called the doctor urgently and he went white. It turned out my wife had started Hyper Ovulation Stimulation Syndrome and the cycle had to be stopped immediately.

So there and then our current chances of becoming parents evaporated. Many people will talk about the emotional roller-coaster that is IVF but we never paid much heed. We made a serious mistake and that was we never contemplated failure. We only contemplated success, failure wasn’t even on our mind, so when that failure did come we were totally unprepared. It was like the chair had been kicked out from underneath us.

As mentioned IVF essentially involves Controlled Ovarian Hyper-stimulation but Hyper Ovulation Stimulation Syndrome is a very dangerous condition where the woman reacts “too well” to the fertility drugs and produces too many ovarian follicles and is at risk of essentially an internal overdose of hormones leading to respiratory, cardiac or renal problems and can be fatal.

So getting over this HOSS involved stopping treatment and then careful monitoring to make sure the threat dissipated, we then needed my wife’s regular ovulation cycle to get back on track and as you can imagine this took a number of months. We found Clane IVF clinic to be very professional, very supportive and always felt they had our best interests to the fore and would not rush treatment cycles.

For many patients of IVF, the first cycle really is like the zeroing shots at range practice. It allows the IVF professionals get an idea to the responsiveness to IVF drugs of one woman’s body compared to another’s.

For our second cycle the IVF injection dose was adjusted and we made some significant adjustments to our expectations. This time we only contemplated failure and decided that success would be a bonus. This approach we believed would protect us somewhat from disappointment if the cycle failed again.

This cycle however went well and a date was set for February 2008 for the harvesting procedure. Again this involves an inter-vaginal ultrasound probe just this time with a retractable lance that is able to burst each follicle and extract the egg. At the time the IVF clinic was in a portacabins at Clane General Hospital and there was a small 3 bed-roomed ward next to the theatre which was connected via a hatch to the Embryology laboratory.

So my wife got gowned up and was sedated for the procedure as I waited on my own in the small ward. Eventually my wife was brought back into the ward in a wheelchair, bleeding and with tears running down her face and streaming down her neck. For me this was an extremely low point of my life. I felt extremely guilty because this was my fault, I was infertile not my wife. If I was functional she would not have needed to go through this.

So I’m sitting beside my wife who is upset and confused because of the sedation I’m trying to comfort her and then one of the IVF nurses called in to us to tell us the egg harvesting had been a success and that now it was “my turn”. I was handed a small sample container and had to go into a room I had nicknamed “the milking parlour” to have the most important wank of my life. If you pardon my porn reference this was the “money shot”, I had to produce and my aim had to be impeccable.

Once I provided the sample it was handed over immediately to the embryologist and he went and worked his scientific magic of ICSI. IVF is now a very well understood procedure but many people are a bit horrified when they realise the scientific & medical technology was adapted from the livestock industry.

So I believe that 18 eggs were harvested and treated with ICSI. This resulted in 15 successfully fertilised eggs. We opted for a service that matured the zygotes a bit longer in the lab. While this was more expensive it also improved the odds of success when transferred.

I think it was 2 weeks later that we went back for the eggs to be transferred. To improve the chances of success Clane transferred 2 zygotes in what is a relatively straightforward procedure and then it was a waiting game for 2 weeks until the first blood test.

Those 2 weeks are a time of huge anticipation. Do you cheat and try a home pregnancy test or do you wait until the official, higher accuracy, blood pregnancy test. So we waited until the official test and you have to then wait for a phone call from the lab to give you the good or bad news. Like I said we had dampened down expectations but it was till nerve racking.

When the news came it was positive, we were going to be parents. Naturally we were overjoyed and we kicked into “nesting mode” and what turned out to be an uneventful and normal pregnancy.

Our first child,  was born in October 2009 and when I first set eyes on him I became very emotional. Tears came out of nowhere as I sobbed uncontrollably looking at this helpless little bundle swaddled in a hospital blanket, blinking and yawning and wondering where he was.

We still had some frozen embryos and so a year or so later we decided to try for another cycle. This time we chose to transfer only a single embryo as a year or so into being parents neither of us fancied the thoughts of being parents of twins. But again, we made the mistake of not contemplating failure, again we thought everything would work like it did the previous time. So cycle 3 was a failure but as well as that all along the different phases of harvesting, fertilisation, transfer, freezing and thawing there was an attrition rate and so after cycle 3 we only had 2 fertilised zygotes left.

Again, after a failed cycle my wife needed a number of months for her menstrual cycle to get back to normal before we could go for the 4th cycle attempt. We took the decision to transfer our last 2 remaining embryos taking the chance on twins rather than the expense of a further cycle. Like in the case of our first pregnancy only one embryo took and in May 2012 our second son was born.

Both boys are now in school with one in Junior Infants and the other in First Class of our local school. Both are healthy fun loving kind kids with a love of the outdoors and both have a curious mind and 99% of the time they are a pure joy to raise. The thought always fascinates me as to how would their personalities be different if they had been transferred in the opposite order. Technically they are twins being conceived on the same day but just born over 2 years apart.

IVF was an expensive undertaking and we spent many tens of thousands of euro. I am conscious of many of my Irish Army Air Corps colleagues with fertility difficulties remain childless because either the IVF technology was not mature enough at the time to deal with their level of infertility or because they simply could not afford the cost of the procedure.

I have no doubt that my fertility trouble stemmed from my working environment in the Irish Air Corps at Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnel. The working conditions were horrendous,  we had no chemical training whatsoever, we were issued with no PPE whatsoever and the buildings that housed the chemicals I worked with were asbestos clad brick sheds built by the British in 1915-1918 and were unfit for purpose as they had utterly inadequate ventilation.

Chemicals we worked with in Baldonnel were exceptionally dangerous and were listed as Carcinogens, Mutagens and Teratogens and a number of chemicals in daily use were reproductive toxins and warned of harm to fertility as well as the capacity to cause heritable genetic harm.

My wife and I are definitely one of the luckier couples from Baldonnel, many couples have not been able to have children and will move into an old age that will be lonelier as a result. It is one thing if you don’t want a family but to want a family and be denied it because your employer didn’t give a damn about Health & Safety is galling.

Worse still I believe are the serving and former personnel who have managed to have children but whose children have suffered serious physical & mental disabilities due to their parents unprotected chemical exposure during their service in the Irish Army Air Corps. Many of these chemicals have the capacity not only to harm sperm, eggs and the developing child but also to harm the male &  female reproductive organs increasing the chance of disabled children long after leaving the service.

Infertility is common and on the increase but the levels of infertility or fertility difficulties experienced by male personnel in the most chemically contaminated workshops in Baldonnel appears anecdotally to be as high as 50%.

This is another health effect of the chemical Health & Safety failings that needs full investigation by competent medical & scientific bodies.