Unit owes its existence to hard work and incredible generosity

BACK in the summer of 1990 when a small group of Kerry FCA members set off on a charity walk along the Iveragh peninsula they can hardly have known where the journey would end 27 years later.

‘Operation Iveragh’ as it came to be affectionately known by the FCA members saw the troops spend six days trekking the 230km Kerry Way walking route.

On the way the group raised a €25,200 which they planned to donate to improve hospice care in the county.

That money was presented to Dr Tom McCormack who used it to set up the Kerry Hospice Movement.

Kerry Hospice Foundation Chairman Ted Moynihan explains what happened next.

“On the way in 1990 we stopped at every house in south Kerry looking for many and, fair play to them, they gave it to is,” he said.

“We did it again in 91 and 92 and on the way home to Tralee in 1992 we decided to start a foundation and spread our wings,” said Ted.

The Kerry Hospice Foundation, as we know it now, was born.

“We founded 20 committees around the county and I’m happy to say 18 of these are still here to this day,” Ted said.

What happened over the next 27 years is truly remarkable.

Since 1992 the foundation – thanks to the work of volunteers in every part of Kerry – it raised €11.5 million.

As well as funding home care for thousands of people the foundation built a €3.2million Palliative Care out patient unit, which opened in at what was then Kerry General Hospital.

In 2009 the foundation decided it was time to take the next step, to build a dedicated in patient Palliative Care unit at the hospital.

To do this, and in just six years, the KHF raised €6.2 million to build the unit and the sod was turned on it, by Ted Moynihan, in late 2015.

On Friday Ted officially opened the unit and the first patients are due to come through the unit’s doors by the end of this year.

That doesn’t mean the KHF will be resting its laurels.

The KHF have pledged to cover the cost of staffing the unit for the next five years – at a cost of €400,000 a year – in addition to paying for the foundation’s own vital day-to-day activities around the county.

It may seem like a massive figure to raise every year but given what the KHF and its inspirational volunteers – none of whom receive a cent for their tireless work – have achieved to date no one doubts their ability to do it.

At Friday’s opening ceremony new KHF patron RTE journalist Katie Hannon put the foundations in perspective in her own inimitable style.

“The Kerry Hospice Foundation have given a great gift to the county,” she said.

“You’d have to be in awe of what they have done. As a political correspondent I can say, in terms of the organisation Ted and his team put together, there is no political organisation in the entire country that could match what you have done here.”