A contestant in this year’s Rose of Tralee competition has told how she is taking part to honour her late brother who died tragically.
Aoife de Buitléir (28), a mental health nurse from Wexford, will represent Sydney having lived in the Australian city since 2019. She has revealed she is travelling to take part to honour her older sibling Matthew, who took his own life in Sydney seven years ago.
Matthew had emigrated to Sydney some years previously and was the inspiration behind Aoife’s decision to move there.
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She revealed: “What I want to highlight is that Matthew is a huge part of my life and I love talking about him and keeping his memory alive. He’s the reason why I’m in Sydney and what motivates my life here.
“The Rose of Tralee festival will be going on around the time of his anniversary, so it will be a time of really mixed emotions for me.
“It was always a dream of mine to come to Australia and move out to him once I finished my studies to experience the life he loved so much.
“Matthew died in August 2016. I was travelling America that summer, just before I was about to enter my final year in Dundalk IT studying Mental Health Nursing.
“Obviously, his death was devastating, but what made it worse was we were all on three different continents. I was in the US, family was in Ireland, and we were having to deal with a tragedy in Australia and all the bureaucracy that goes with that.
“Through the Irish community and charities, such as the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust, we were all able to get home and have his funeral in Ireland.
“Matthew had a close community around him in Sydney, where they also had a funeral service before he was brought home to Ireland. We as a family were so grateful for the support he had in Sydney such as The Central Coast GAA, Irish Support Agency and his friends and colleagues who all rallied around us at such a difficult time.
“When I walk out on the stage in Tralee, Matthew will be on my mind, of course he will.
“And what I’d love my story to highlight is that it’s important to show that if you work hard and keep believing in yourself, no matter how low you might feel at times, when you have a strong community and family and friends behind you, you can achieve all your goals.
“As much as I would love Matthew to be here with me today, I hope that in my role as a mental health nurse and my effort to be a positive role model, which the Rose of Tralee will allow me to showcase, I can help at least one person who may be struggling at the moment to know that there is hope then it will be worth it."
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