Mayo man wins Rotary Ireland conference golf outing

A Mayo man has won a golf outing as part of Rotary Ireland’s annual conference.

Finian Joyce of Rotary Club of Castlebar emerged the winner after a game of golf at Woodbrook Golf Club in Wicklow.

Rotary Ireland welcomed two hundred and forty delegates from all over the island of Ireland and as far away as Australia, Africa, the USA and Great Britain to its annual conference at the Royal Marine Hotel in Dun Laoghaire recently. 

It was the organisation’s seventy-fifth annual conference, and the theme of the event was sustainability.

Attendees at the conference also participated in a range of local activities including the golf game, a walking tour of Dun Laoghaire, a bus tour of Wicklow as well as a guided tour of the Seamus Heaney trail. 

The conference heard from a range of speakers involved in caring for different aspects of our environment, including Dr Matthew Jebb, Director of the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin. 

Rotary Ireland’s chosen charity this year is Cancer Fund for Children and two of the key speakers at the conference were Peter O’Brien, Chair of the Board of Trustees and 18-year-old Alex McEleney from Dublin who was diagnosed with leukaemia when he was just eleven.

Mr O’Brien interviewed Mr McEleney at the conference about the last seven years of intense treatment, the two relapses he experienced and his journey to becoming a Young Ambassador for the charity. 

Cancer Fund for Children has a residential centre in County Down which provides young people with cancer and their families from all over Ireland with a place where they can relax and spend time together. 

Mr O’Brien outlined to the conference their plans for a second centre in Cong, which will enable the charity to increase the number of children and parents it supports each year from 1,800 to 4,000. 

Plans for the centre, which will cost around €20 million to build, are well advanced, with the facility set to open in 2026.

For more information about Rotary Ireland, see their website.