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Ronan talks to UK Radio Aid - January 18th 2005 Please do not use this without asking for permission !
And as a family man, we’ve all been watching the images from Boxing Day ‘til now it must hit home almost even more when you’ve got kids of your own? I remember the images in particular of the one about the mother holding the son that had died, and she was just holding him, I think it was on the front page of the Mail I can’t remember. You can’t help but well up when you look at that, when you have kids yourself it broke my heart. This woman was screeching ya know, she’s holding her dead son in her arms and it just ya know I mean…..part of me thinks maybe we shouldn’t see that, the media go a step further but - a step too far. But then at the same time when you see it, it makes you wanna go that extra mile, and give that little bit more. So it’s kind of that shock treatment which works too and then they went with a week later, they went with that photograph of those dead bodies just lying on the beach, I mean I have to say that messed me up, I’d never seen anything like that. But again it shows that it actually works coz the way people have actually reacted to it is immense. And I think that kind of highlights why today is so important coz there is that feeling we’ve all got of helplessness and suddenly you can feel like you’re doing something? Yeah everybody kind of knows somebody who was affected by it or someone who was out there I mean I have a friend who was out there and I remember scrambling for the phone on St. Stephens day, trying to get hold of him and it was just scary and thank God they were alright, but it’s just nuts….nuts. We have another friend who was out there and he was in his hotel and a bit of water came in the window and all of a sudden the window came in and he grabbed his wife and they ran up to the fourth floor of the hotel because that’s the first place they got relief, ya know in the hotel. And they went up to the mountains and they came back down then after a week, or after a couple of days and they went to their room to get passports and er ya know there were people in their room, there were dead bodies in the room. It’s just mind boggling and I don’t think….like I say we’ve seen so much but there’s an awful lot more that’s gone on, these people have to rebuild their lives, they have to rebuild their country, there’s an awful lot of work to be done and it’s gonna take a lot of money and I think people are doing an incredible amount of giving and I think it’s gonna take a lot more. But the importance with something today is everyone keeping in mind no matter kind of what you give with building for the future here it’s such a long term thing But we’re not just building houses we’re building people’s lives again, people have lost everything….EVERYTHING. Not just the walls around them, and they’ve lost their families, they’ve lost their parents ya know, they’ve lost their livelihoods they’ve lost everything so it’s just important that people do their bit. |
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feel very blessed and very lucky and I think we need to give back and this is
how we give back, we use our……I guess we use our ah exposure to bring exposure
to this charity and to the other charities that we get involved in and this is
such an incredible cause. People really need to dig deep, not just now but in
the weeks to come ya know as they rebuild and people try and get their lives
back together again.