Tears of joy for Dermot

WELL-KNOWN disability rights campaigner, Dermot Devlin cried tears of joy this week after emerging at last from over 400 days of an almost total lockdown.

Last March, the Greencastle man was among hundreds of local people who were considered clinically vulnerable and advised to shield in order to protect themselves from Covid-19.

Dermot lives with a rare disease – Mucopolysaccharides Morquio – and entered a self-enforced physical seclusion even before the pandemic was declared.

It is only now, exactly 405 days later, that he has felt safe enough to take the first tentative steps towards normality and returned to his workplace.