Businessman son of elderly advocate hands over charity cheque

The son of a well-known advocate of the elderly with a lifetime of social work and advocacy has followed in his father’s footsteps with his recent fundraising efforts with the help of fellow colleagues.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree for Brian O’Brien, known as Bob, son of Paddy O’Brien who is known fondly for his advocacy work in Cork.

Mr O’Brien, who is a partner at local business management consultancy firm 3SIXTY, recently handed over a cheque for €3,000 to Pieta House.

The 3SIXTY team decided this year to give a donation to a deserving charity rather than their usual Christmas tradition of exchanging gifts amongst colleagues.

Mr O’Brien said that colleagues contributed to the fund by way of Christmas gifts foregone in order to the suicide and self-harm prevention charity.

Speaking to The Echo, Mr O’Brien said: "3SIXTY is delighted to be able to make this contribution to the amazing work done by Pieta House. Rather than buying ‘things’ for each other this Christmas, our colleagues felt a more impactful and sustainable approach would be to make a donation to a local charity.

“We thought this was a fantastic idea and when we explored it further with our colleagues, Pieta House was the preferred organisation.” 

The cheque was recently presented to Funding and Advocacy Executive of Pieta House, Darran Coyle Garde by Mr O’Brien along with his father Paddy.

Since 2006, Pieta House has seen and helped over 60,000 people in suicidal distress or engaging in self-harm and established 15 centres across the country.

In 2020 alone, Pieta delivered over 52,000 hours of intervention and bereavement counselling and managed over 70,000 crisis calls and texts through its 24 freephone helpline. The charity also directly ed over 600 households devastated by the loss of a loved one by suicide.

Pieta is reminding people that the service continues to be available throughout the festive period and into the New Year and the crisis helpline is open 24 hours, seven days a week by phoning 1800 247 247 or text HELP to 51444.