AN ENNISCORTHY group who were planning a golf classic in memory of a friend who had passed away were left shocked when their chosen charity, The Irish Lung Foundation, pulled the plug on the event with just over a week to go leaving them scrambling to find an alternative charity at the last minute.
PJ Cowman from Gimont Avenue had been planning the event in memory of his friend David “Dots” Redmond from Fr Murphy Park who had passed away in February of this year. David had suffered with a range of health problems including Cystic Fibrosis and COPD, and it was for that reason that PJ decided to run the golf classic for the Irish Lung Foundation.
“It was all going well,” said PJ who became good friends with “Dots” and played golf with him regularly. “We were organising the event through the Treacy’s Golf Society and we had about 30 or 40 golfers on board. We had also managed to secure around 30 prizes and raffle prizes and things like that.”
Eventually, to help with obtaining more prizes and sponsorship, PJ requested some kind of email confirmation from the Irish Lung Foundation that he was in fact staging the event for them.
“For some reason they just refused to give me a letter saying that we were running the event for their benefit,” he said. “All we wanted was a simple email and they wouldn’t give it to us. They more or less said that we had enough prizes and to just go ahead and run it as it was.”
When David’s sister wanted to organise a raffle in her workplace, but again needed some kind of written confirmation from the charity, she also got in touch with the Irish Lung Foundation, but similarly had no luck.
“Then I got a call from them saying that they didn’t want the money and they were calling the whole thing off,” said PJ. “I said that I was doing nothing until I got it in writing that they were calling it off. It was strange that they sent me an email saying that they were cancelling the event, but they refused to send me an email saying that we were putting it on for them in the first place! Then after that I got another email threatening me with legal action if I didn’t remove everything about the event from the internet by a certain time.”
While The Echo made an effort to contact the Irish Lung Foundation, they were unavailable for comment at the time of going to print.
PJ says that he has staged charity events before, but he had never come up against an attitude like this. “It’s unbelievable,” he said. “In this day and age, charities are crying out for money and here these were throwing it back in our faces. Before myself and a few other lads, including Dots himself, didn’t shave or get a haircut for three months to raise funds for Crumlin Children’s Hospital. Anything we needed in terms of permits or anything we were given and we raised over €6,000.”
Determined that the event would go ahead and that money would be raised for some charity in his late friend’s name, PJ approached David’s former fiancée Paula Lynch for advice.
“I told Paula what had happened and said that we were looking for a different charity,” said PJ. “She said that Dots also suffered from COPD and maybe they would want the money so we got in touch with COPD Support Ireland and they couldn’t have been better. Damien Peelo, the CEO, said that he couldn’t understand why the Irish Lung Foundation wouldn’t provide us with an email to say we were doing the event to raise funds for them. He was delighted to benefit from the event though and was very helpful.”
However, that wasn’t the end of the matter with the Irish Lung Foundation. “What really annoyed me though was that someone from the Irish Lung Foundation contacted Damien at COPD Support Ireland and advised him not to work with us. He knew the story and asked them why they wouldn’t give us the email and they wouldn’t say. Basically they’ve given us no reason as to why they wouldn’t put it in writing that we were raising money for them or why they decided to pull the plug on the whole thing.”
However, PJ and the rest of the gang at the Treacy’s Golf Society refused to be put off and they headed off for Carrigleade Golf Course in Kilkenny on Saturday for the event. Despite the complications with the original charity, they were delighted to be able to help with COPD Support Ireland and are hoping to have raised a significant sum in memory of their late friend David.
The late David Dots Redmond, who the golf tournament was being run in memory of.