Cranberries' royalties for Chernobyl children

Limerick’s Cranberries rock group are to give the proceeds of their next single to the Chernobyl Children’s Project charity, they announced today.

Lead singer Dolores O’Riordan was speaking in Dublin today at a ceremony attended by Ali Hewson, the wife of U2’s Bono and a patron of the charity, and the organisation’s founder, Adi Roche.

O’Riordan said she wrote the song, Time is Ticking Out, after seeing pictures of the children affected by the Chernobyl disaster soon after giving birth to her second child.

The aim, she added, was to raise international awareness about the plight of the children, as well as money.

The singer said: ‘‘I was so moved, almost to tears, that I wrote Time is Ticking Out. It was inspired by the children.’’

Ms Roche said the title of the single was appropriate as health problems created by the 1986 nuclear power station accident were only now beginning to emerge.

She reported that the effects of the disaster were now moving on to the next generation, ‘‘who are witnessing soaring levels of genetic changes, especially among those who were less than six years of age when the accident happened’’.

Ms Roche founded the Cork-based charity in 1991 to aid victims of the disaster and so far it has raised €24m (£18.9m) for aiding the region.