Woman leaves €30m to charities in will

A MULTI-millionairess who had battled cancer donated €30million to five charities after she died – including €6million to the Irish Cancer Society, it has emerged.

The €6million given to the ICS by Elizabeth Annette Alice O’Kelly, who died aged 93 in December 2016, is the single largest donation ever received by the charity.

In fact, it is almost double the €3.1million the ICS made from its largest single fundraising effort, Daffodil Day in 2017.

Mrs O’Kelly, from Stradbally, Co. Laois, was a shareholder in Clylim Properties, which has extensive property interests in Dublin. It has also been reported that she made around €30million from the sale of the Leinster Leader Ltd newspaper group in 2005. She was the main beneficiary from this sale, profiting from her 22% holding. It is believed she inherited this from her family and was a ‘silent shareholder’ at the time.

Yesterday, the ICS said in a statement: ‘We are deeply grateful to Mrs Elizabeth O’Kelly for generously remembering people with cancer in her will. Her generosity will provide hope to so many people affected by cancer and deliver improvements in cancer care that would have been impossible otherwise.’

It said Mrs O’Kelly ‘was known for displaying great kindness towards her friends and being charitable in supporting those in need’. The ICS said that this ‘kindness and generosity is reflected in her decision to leave equal amounts [€6million] in her will to five charities’.

The charity added: ‘Mrs O’Kelly successfully battled cancer in the 1980s. She knew first-hand the challenges cancer patients face and the positive difference the Irish Cancer Society makes to them in their time of need.

‘In the 1980s, when Mrs O’Kelly was diagnosed with cancer, only three out of ten Irish cancer patients survived.

‘Today, six out of ten do. This is thanks in no small part to the generosity of the Irish public in supporting the Irish Cancer Society’s life-saving research, advocacy and patient support services.’

Locals in Stradbally described Mrs O’Kelly as a ‘very quiet woman’ who lived in a large house in the town’s Market Square. ‘We knew she was wealthy, but we didn’t realise how much,’ one local told the Laois Today news service after her death. She was understood to have moved to the town a number of years before her death. The property she resided in was put on the market after she died with an asking price of €200,000.

The ICS’s accounts show that only 2% of its income comes from the State, and that the €6million windfall contributed to its income increasing by a significant 18% to €26.8million last year.

Former senator Averil Power was appointed chief executive of the ICS in January of this year.

The charity said yesterday that Ms Power is paid an annual salary of €125,000, and that this is a reduction of €20,000 on what was paid to its CEO in 2015.