Irish Red Cross
The Irish Red Cross Society was formally established on 1 July 1939 under the terms of the Red Cross Act 1938. Its constitution is based on the Geneva Conventions of 1949, their additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005 (the Geneva Conventions), to which Ireland is a party, Acts of the Oireachtas and relevant provisions of the international Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
The organisation has been supervised by the Irish Department of Defence and it receives €1 million p.a. from the State; its management is currently being reformed.
Formerly the Irish White Cross had worked in the Irish Free State in 1921-28.
The society is organised on a voluntary basis. In Ireland, its activities include mountain rescue, first aid education of the public, the provision of first aid and ambulance services at public events, as well as other community services including therapeutic hand care for the elderly and training of carers. Outside of Ireland, the society provides relief and humanitarian services in response to natural disasters and in regions of conflict.
The headquarters of the Irish Red Cross is located at 16 Merrion Square North, Dublin 2. The society is a member of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Read more about Irish Red Cross: Organisation, Use of Red Cross Insignia, Controversies
Famous quotes containing the words irish, red and/or cross:
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“You can’t be a Red if you’re married to a civil servant.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“In Russia there is an emigration of intelligence: émigrés cross the frontier in order to read and to write good books. But in doing so they contribute to making their fatherland, abandoned by spirit, into the gaping jaws of Asia that would like to swallow our little Europe.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)