Donations can still be made to Children's Hour, Ireland's biggest fund-raising project under which everyone in the workforce is been asked to donate their final hour's earnings of the millennium to benefit children.
To date, the initiative has collected about £3,500,000 but this is still short of the planned £5,000,000. Mr Paul Keogh of Children's Hour says that if people haven't already contributed, they can still make over-the-counter donations at post offices and financial institutions. The offices of Children's Hour, at 26-27 Upper Pembroke Street, Dublin, will remain open until January 15th.
Children's Hour is supported by a National Lottery Beneficiary Fund with a £250,000 grant, and has received the endorsement of the Government's National Millennium Committee and the social partners, represented by IBEC and ICTU.
Since September, one-third of the workforce, or more than 385,000 people, have made donations. The average donation has been about £7 a person, he says. Some companies are matching the workforce donation.
The last few days of the millennium are directed towards individual donors from the film, music, media and entertainment industries, says Mr Keogh. Children's Hour will also be targeting politicians from both Houses of the Oireachtas.
The initiative has reached more than one-third of the workforce, but falls short of the anticipated 60 per cent penetration because some companies were unable to implement the deduction through their computerised pay systems for fear of triggering further Y2K problems, according to Mr Keogh.
These companies will make their employees' contributions in January and February.
The Civil Service was also unable to streamline the Children's Hour deduction into its pay systems, and as a result the overall contribution from the public sector was lower than anticipated.
Small and medium-sized companies have responded to the appeal well but so have some large businesses: IBM's 2,000 employees have donated a total of more than £17,000.