{"id":601540,"date":"2026-08-22T21:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T21:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/601540\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T21:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T21:16:10","slug":"ardara-man-thanks-no-barriers-for-changing-everything-after-serious-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/601540\/","title":{"rendered":"Ardara man thanks No Barriers for changing “everything” after serious crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Ardara man who was seriously injured in a road crash two years ago has credited the work of the No Barriers Foundation in helping him find his feet again.<\/p>\n

Daniel Gallagher was involved<\/a> in a serious road traffic accident whilst on holiday in Orlando, Florida on Friday 29th of December 2023.<\/p>\n

Doctors battled to save his life thousands of miles away from home, with an online fundraiser receiving over \u20ac100,000 in donations to assist Daniel and his family.<\/p>\n

Just two months after the accident<\/a>, he was able to return home for further treatment in Letterkenny.<\/p>\n

However that return home was just the beginning of a long road to recovery, as Daniel’s injury was so serious that he would be left wheelchair-bound – if not for the work of No Barriers.<\/p>\n

On today’s Ireland AM show, Daniel detailed his recovery journey, which began at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dublin.<\/p>\n

It was there where he was urged by a friend to give the facilities at the No Barriers Foundation in Letterkenny a go.<\/p>\n

“I was up in the NRH, and a fella used to come and meet a friend of mine every week, and he kept telling me about No Barriers – which I hadn’t heard of, to be honest – and (he said that) his brother went there, and he said it was great,” Daniel said.<\/p>\n

“So when I got home from the rehab, I didn’t really think much about it, but he kept saying to me, \u2018did you ever get in contact with No Barriers?\u2019”<\/p>\n

“I basically had to, because he kept asking me!”<\/p>\n

Amongst the inclusive facilities available at the No Barriers Foundation are exoskeleton suits, which help those with movement difficulties to stand and walk.<\/p>\n

Daniel said that eventually a visit to No Barriers became a weekly occurrence, and that he would not be able to leave his wheelchair if not for his visits to the Foundation to access their exoskeleton and physiotherapy treatments.<\/p>\n

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“(I had a) couple of sessions, and it kind of grew from there over the space of a year and a half, and I ended up going every week,” Daniel said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn’t know what to expect because I was never in that kind of situation…. I had no idea (and I was) very nervous.”<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s changed everything. When you get out of Dun Laoghaire, or come home, you hit the floor. You have nothing to do. Even getting into the car to go down there twice a week, it’s something to do. You end up looking forward to it, and it’s like a new calendar of stuff to do.”<\/p>\n

No Barriers CEO Johnny Loughrey also told Ireland AM about the foundation’s origin story, and its work.<\/p>\n

“Originally I am a physiotherapist by trade and I had been working with Paralympics Ireland and delivering services in the community,” Johnny said.<\/p>\n

“I suppose in Donegal there was a huge lack of services in the community – my own mum would have been really sick when I was young, so it was something I really cared about, and I was thinking about how we could access specialist equipment and deliver services in the best way possible in Donegal but at the lowest price point possible.”<\/p>\n

“I set up the No Barriers Foundation in 2016 as a not-for-profit organisation, with the idea that if everyone just pulls together (between) government and grants and fundraising and social enterprise, that we could try and make this type of service available.”<\/p>\n

“It took about two years putting the committee together and doing public fundraising, and we managed to get our first exoskeleton in 2018. At that stage, we had no facility to run it from, and we had no staff members, so it just organically grew from there.”<\/p>\n

“Initially we were very focused on neurological rehabilitation and physical disability, but now in 2026, we operate out of a 13,000 square foot facility, and we deliver services to people with physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities, (people with mental health issues) and we’re also looking at (helping) students in poverty.”<\/p>\n

You can watch Daniel and the No Barriers Foundation’s appearance on Ireland AM today in full by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Ardara man who was seriously injured in a road crash two years ago has credited the work…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-601540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}