Doctors and nurses go free at cinema for the rest of the year

WHILE the entire nation feels a debt of gratitude towards the doctors and nurses risking their lives on the frontline every day, very few can express their thanks like Graham Spurley has.

As the Managing Director of Movies at Gorey, Graham has decided that, once the cinema reopens, nurses and doctors will go free of charge for the rest of the year.

‘It came to me in a brainwave last Tuesday afternoon, and literally three days later we had it all arranged. As a cinema business, we’re not in a position where we can donate food to those in the hospitals so we wanted to try something else.

‘We’re a family business and my mother has been ill so the doctors and nurses have been very much in our thought processes – and we wanted to give something back when, please god, we’ve all got through this thing. It’s a small gesture, a drop in a very large ocean.’

Available for doctors and nurses with memberships of either the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland (NMBI) or the Irish Medical Council (IMC) Graham said the offer comes without any restrictions, meaning frontline workers can go to the cinema for free every night of the week if they so wish.

‘There’ll be no restrictions in place, if they want to come every night of the week they are more than welcome to. The ticket will be for the nurse/ doctor though, not for their partner or children.

‘Our popcorn supplier has also intimated they’ll come on board and provide free popcorn and nachos. How it works is they simply present their NMBI or IMC card at the till and receive a ticket in exchange; it’ll be as simple as possible, there’ll be no online forms to fill out or anything like that.’

Although he is fully aware and grateful for the work done by ambulance crews, paramedics and cleaners at hospitals, Graham said that, as a small business, he could only afford to extend this gesture of goodwill to nurses and doctors.

Before anyone can avail of a free ticket, the cinema itself has to be open. And when Movies at Gorey does reopen, its staff will all be invited back.

‘Obviously we’re completely shut down at the moment, but our senior staff have been kept on with full pay,’ Graham said. ‘And once we reopen the rest of our staff will all be requested to come back if they wish to.’