Share A Dream house ready to turn Christmas lights off for the last time

TODAY is traditionally the day for taking down the lights and decorations for another year, but for Helen and Jim Dunne, it is the last year for their dazzling Christmas lights display.

Having raised €160,000 for the Share A Dream Foundation, which gives terminally ill children a chance to realise a lifelong dream, they can no longer afford to pay the ESB bill at what has become known as “The House of Dreams”.

“We’ve never, ever taken money out of the boxes to run the lights,” said 63-year-old Helen, “and we always said that when the day came that we couldn’t pay the ESB, that would be the end.”

At midnight, they’ll switch the lights off for the very last time and it will be “like a death in the family,” said Helen, who has welcomed seasonal visitors from the USA and Russia.

This year, it will cost about €800 to power the hundreds of bulbs and decorations that attracted 430 children on November 1, when they flicked the switch to illuminate the Westmeath town of Moate.

“When we first started, people were beating down the door to sponsor the ESB,” said Helen, and in return, they’d put up signs to advertise the companies.

However, many of those businesses are no longer there and this year they had just two sponsors.

Six years ago, a sponsor who had “a huge bill” with ESB managed to negotiate a €200 reduction, but since then they’ve had no luck, just increasing electricity and VAT costs. “We’ve tried Airtricity and Bord Gáis, but they don’t want to know you,” she said, adding that tonight would be particularly hard for Jim, 70, who is “seven at heart and the lights are the joy of his life”.

The couple became interested in Share A Dream, which has never received government funding in its 21 years, when they heard founder Shay Kinsella on radio, describing how a young Dubliner’s dream of going to a hotel to have chips and Coke whenever he wanted came true just days before he passed away.

Since then many families have contacted the couple, hoping they could help make a dream come true.

“It has been well worth it to see a child’s face when he gets his dream, and to give a whole family the memory of something wonderful,” she said.

“In a way we’ve fulfilled our dream because we’ve done something for those children, and we will still do our utmost to give a child a dream.”