Sinéad Baker | Deputy Online Editor
This weekend around 50 young swimmers will take part in ‘Snámh Phádraig/Swim for Pádraig’ to fundraise for Trinity graduate Pádraig Schäler. Schäler has been in a coma since since last June after being injured in a bicycle accident involving a car in the United States.
Participants in the event will journey to and swim in the water off the coasts of every county in Ireland. The event will take place over 38 hours from the 12-13th of April. Schäler is said to be a talented swimmer and involved in the Irish language, thus the event is to be bilingual.
Mr Schäler, aged 23, was on a J1 visa to the United States after completing his undergraduate studies in Irish and History in Trinity College Dublin when hit by a van while travelling to work in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He was transferred back to Ireland after two weeks of intensive care where he spent three and a half months in a high-dependency ward of Beaumont Hospital.
Friend of Pádraig and organiser of the event Aodhan O’Deá told The University Times: “Pádraig is an excellent swimmer and his friends decided that a challenge swim was the perfect way to honour him. We hope to raise money to help ease the enormous financial burden that has been placed on his family. A special fund has been put up, caring for Pádraig, and all donations to ‘Snámh Phádraig’ will go towards the many and varied costs of Pádraig’s care.”
Mr Schäler’s parents decided to transfer Pádraig to a German hospital in November 2013 following advice from German and British consultants, with an air ambulance reported to have cost €12,000. According to TheIndependent.ie the Schäler family are facing a bill of up to $100,000 (€72,556) for Padraig’s treatment in America. It is these large costs as well as the refusal of insurance companies to cover them that have motivated Pádraig’s friends to hold the fundraising event.
Pádraig’s situation has drawn attention to the shortcomings of the insurance policies sold to students who apply for these visas. His father Reinhard has revealed that the travel insurance company used by his son, Blanchardstown-based Blue Insurances provided through travel agent Go4Less, has retracted its initial agreement to pay for the medical treatment and has now declined. The company declined citing a clause in the small print, as Pádraig was not wearing a bicycle helmet. According to Ciaran Mulligan, Managing Director of Blue Insurances, the company has since changed the wording of its policy to cover those cycling without a helmet. According to The Irish Times the provider agreed to cover his return to Ireland.
Schäler’s parents are also keen to highlight the lack of appropriate care and therapy for patients with brain injury in Ireland.
Pádraig’s father told The Irish Times that his son is now receiving excellent care. “Germany has a very well established system for dealing with patients and a really well structured programme… They say young people of his age and his condition can make incredible progress. They’re so positive that it keeps us going too.”
More information can be found at www.caringforpadraig.org, and donations can be made at www.idonate.ie/766/snamh-phadraig/
