Guide dog services to get €4.5m boost

CRUCIAL supports for the blind, visually impaired and children with autism are set to improve thanks to a multi-million revamp of a charity headquarters.

Health Minister Mary Harney will lay the foundation stone this afternoon for the €4.5 million redevelopment of the Irish Guide Dogs for the Blind’s (IGDB) training centre on Cork’s Model Farm Road.

IGDB chief executive Pádraig Mallon said the buildings will mean significant improvements across its services. The 1,800 square metre project will see at least four new buildings. They will allow the charity, which will train about 140 dogs this year, to expand its guide dog training programme, and its assistance dogs programme, which provides specially trained dogs to the families of children with autism.

The assistance dogs programme was established in 2005 and has a long waiting list of applicants. Mr Mallon said the redevelopment will allow them to meet this growing need.

The IGDB’s long cane training programme, and its independent living training programme, will be expanded with new residential facilities, extra bedrooms and client facilities. Spacious new kennels to house more dogs will be built and a new gym and therapy rooms are also planned.

The centre’s breeding programme, which started in 1984 with two brood bitches and outside stud dogs, and which has been expanded since 2000 to 30 brood bitches and seven stud dogs producing about 140 puppies a year, will also expand.

Mr Mallon said the redevelopment, the first since a major building programme at the charity’s headquarters in 2000-2001, will ensure it has world-class facilities.

The charity has received €780,000 in support from the Dormant Accounts Fund and plans to raise the balance from statutory agencies, corporate and private donors.

* Donations to the National Headquarters Redevelopment Fund can be made by contacting 1850 506 300.