Hospice music festival raises €25k

On August 22 the Roscrea fundraising committee of North Tipperary Hospice held a concert to raise funds for the new Cancer Support House which is currently being renovated in the town and also to remember former chairperson of the committee Anthony Bourke, who sadly passed away in 2024.

The event took months to plan, such as finding the right venue, contacting local musicians, stage, lights, sound, etc. Roscrea Rugby Club kindly donated their grounds for the day which was perfect as it had plenty of parking, room for the stage and bar and toilet facilities. Once the date for the concert was finalised work began in earnest through a hard working sub committee getting tickets printed and promoting the concert. The people of Roscrea have always been very generous supporters of the Hospice and so tickets began to sell quickly and over 25 musicians and groups volunteered their time. Darragh Coughlan provided the stage for the day and huge thanks to Birr man Dickie Donnelly who loaned us the sound and light system which was manned by Ger Nolan. Many thanks to Central Tool Hire who sponsored a generator and to Andrew Walsh for providing a free shuttle bus, along with Doherty Hardware who helped with fencing off the area, also Mike Edwards who was our First Responder. On the day itself we were blessed with great weather and once the gates were opened at 2pm people began to arrive. Thank you to all who volunteered for parking and traffic control. Over 30 prizes were donated for the raffle, which really blew us away.

Food was served in the club house by Pauline Loughnane and there were activities for kids with David Mitchell, and also face painting. Many of the costs on the day were covered by a great friend of Anthony and Valerie, Kevin Mullarkey who actually travelled from England to help. With the one and only John KIrby as our MC, the entire concert was a huge success with €25,000 being raised. Indeed the only missing ingredient from the day was Anthony himself. He would have loved to have been on the stage himself but we are convinced he was looking over us and was very proud of the commitment of all who took part in any way.