Ireland Funds double target to raise €200m

Up to 180 donors from 11 countries and 33 cities have gathered in Killarney this weekend for the biggest Ireland Funds gathering to date.

This the 30th worldwide Ireland Funds conference involving leading global supporters, including donors from Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, the UK and Ireland.

In 2009 in response to the severe downturn in the Irish economy, the worldwide funds launched its Promising Ireland campaign to raise €100 million for Irish charities.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny was told last night that the target had been surpassed – more than €200 million was raised in the past five years and 800 projects supported.

In 2014, more than €20 million in grants went to 270 Irish projects.

Ireland financially was “coming out of the doldrums” and there was hope in the heart and spring in the step, US ambassador Kevin O’Malley told the gathering.

New York-based hotelier John Fitzpatrick, who took over as chairman from Loretta Brennan Glucksman in 2014, said the challenge ahead was to maintain the strong position of the Ireland Funds – in particular the close connections between Ireland and the US.

The Irish were now going not just to America in numbers, but to Australia and elsewhere.

Mr Fitzpatrick also revealed that Tony O’Reilly Snr, the first chair of the organisation and its co-founder, was still “very involved” and had been kept from the conference in Killarney due to recent back surgery.

BBC foreign correspondent Fergal Keane was presented with the Worldwide Ireland Funds annual literary award of $25,000 (€22,000), in a ceremony at Muckross House, the childhood home of the late Billy Vincent, whose idea it was to have a literary award.

Heart and head

Broadcaster Olivia O’Leary, presenting the award, said Keane had always been a reporter who used his heart and his head: “Some people would say he has baggage. He has: it’s called a conscience.”

Mr Keane highlighted the role of the American Ireland Fund in changing the idea of Irishness and making it inclusive by recognising the Protestant tradition on the island.

Just back from Calais where he was reporting on the refugee crisis, Mr Keane said: “The main lesson I have learned in all these years of reporting from conflict zones is not about cruelty, it’s about decency.”