A grandmother is “super excited”Thanks to the relaxed travel rules of Australia, her granddaughter was able to meet her.
Ellen O’Malley Dunlop, 69, has not seen her Sydney-based son, Stuart Dunlop, in more than two and a half years thanks to lockdowns and restrictions to curb the spread of Covid-19 over the past 18 months.
During that time, Mr Dunlop and his wife Rebecca had their second child, who Ms O’Malley Dunlop has not yet been able to meet.
“She was born in the middle of our night here, and it was not an easy birth so it was very worrying,” Ms O’Malley Dunlop, who lives in Templeogue, Dublin told PA.
“But thank God everything was OK, she’s healthy and a gorgeous little girl.
“We’re so looking forward to seeing them.”
Australia has had some the strictest travel restrictions around the globe since March. That means nobody has been permitted to enter or leave the country except for rare exceptions.
It is now planning to lift its ban against citizens going abroad next month. Fully vaccinated adults will be allowed quarantine at home, and not in hotels.
“Thankfully both Stuart and his wife have been vaccinated which means they can, when they go back, self quarantine at home, which is good because it would be very difficult to quarantine in a hotel with two little children,” Ms O’Malley Dunlop, a victims’ rights advocate, said.
“Thanks be to God for FaceTime and Zoom so we were able to talk to them and obviously keep in touch with them all the time, but not knowing when we were going to see him was really upsetting.”
We look forward to a very happy Christmas.
Ms O’Malley Dunlop said her son had already booked flights and she was “super excited”To know that she would soon be seeing them.
She said: “I’m not looking back now, just looking forward, and I’m going to enjoy every second of them being at home.
“And obviously it will be such a treat to see them mixing with their other cousins.
“We have three other sons, and they’re all living in Ireland, and altogether we have seven granddaughters and one grandson, so we are looking forward to a very, very happy Christmas.”