Limerick man and fiancée obey inter-county restrictions to 'letter of the law'

WE’RE all looking forward to inter-county travel resuming on May 10 but Edmund Dollery can’t wait.

Most of us might be thinking about a trip to Ballybunion or Kilkee but the Rathkeale man can see his fiancée for the first time in over four months.

“She lives in Roscommon. The last time I saw her was Christmas Eve. Only for FaceTime we’d have forgotten what we look like,” joked Edmund. He declined to name his partner for the last 19 years as she is a very private lady.

Even FaceTiming each other on their phones or laptops has proved tricky.

“The thing is her internet is so bad that she has to drive to a supermarket. We can’t do FaceTime from her house,” said Edmund.

If everybody behaved like Edmund and his fiancée we would have been out of lockdown a lot sooner. Last year, they only met up when inter-county travel was allowed. 

How hard has it been on the couple?

“It’s very frustrating when you saw what was going on in Salthill the other week with big crowds gathering. They weren’t all Galway people. What we had in Rathkeale at Christmas time really annoyed me as well.

“There were still people moving around from county to county. We’re doing the right thing all along. If she tried to come down to Limerick and she was stopped she has a fine straight away and the same with me,” said Edmund.

The retired firefighter in Rathkeale said there are many more in the same situation as him and his fiancée. The have both been very Covid conscious as Edmund looks after his parents, aged in their 80s, while his partner also cares for an elderly relative.

“They are vaccinated now thankfully and I can apply for it shortly as I’m 62. We have been very careful. That is the most annoying thing – that people couldn’t visit members of their family if they were in another county no matter how careful they were. It is not just our situation, there are a lot of people who couldn’t even go see their families,” said Edmund.

“We’d only be going from house to house – there would be no mixing or anything like that,” he continued.

Edmund has been left aghast at the behaviour of a minority and some comments on Facebook.

“When Covid first arrived I thought everybody would comply with the restrictions. When you see some of the comments on Facebook and everything else it is hard to understand that people don’t make an effort one way or the other. They don’t seam to care. Some of them were just denying it was a problem at all,” he said.