Gardaí help raise €1m for Asia aid

GARDA COMMISSIONER Noel Conroy will today join pub and hotel chiefs in handing over a cheque for over €1 million to the Irish Red Cross.

The money will bring the total collected by the Red Cross Asian tsunami appeal to almost €11m since fundraising began on St Stephen’s Day.

The public continued to pour money into aid agencies over the weekend with over €20m collected.

This excludes the Sunday mass collections, which are expected to swell Trócaire’s appeal by several million.

Trócaire had raised €2.2 million before Sunday, while Concern had collected almost 3m.

Goal yesterday said it had raised €3m. Unicef has collected €1.25m.

AIB has also pledged a further €3m to Goal.

The IRC yesterday welcomed the money raised by the Gardaí in conjunction with the Licensed Vintners Association, the Vintners Federation of Ireland and the Irish Hotels Federation.

The bodies representing pub and hotel owners organised a collection over the New Year’s Weekend.

A garda spokesman yesterday said the various bodies were delighted to be able to hand over a cheque of €1,089,453 to the IRC.

“All four organisations would like to thank the public and their own members for the huge effort involved in collecting this amount of money,” said the spokesman.

Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy, along with representatives from the other organisations, will present the cheque to the IRC at ththeir headquarters in Dublin this afternoon.

A spokeswoman for the IRC said they had collected “close to €10m” so far, not including today’s cheque.

In addition to the financial contributions, more than 700 people had applied to become Red Cross volunteers in Asia.

“Doctors and nurses made themselves available, and we also have applications from farmers, engineers, builders, electricians and plumbers,” said Margaret Conway of the IRC.