Community programmes

Age Action care and repair services

In 2006, Irish Life selected Age Action Ireland as its partner to develop ‘care and repair’ services for older people in Ireland. These consist of a home visiting service and a small home repairs service. Irish Life is providing funding to Age Action to develop the new services (225,000 in 2009).

In 2008, Age Action introduced a franchising option for other providers to offer the services and this has proved to be very successful. By the end of 2009, there were 18 franchises up and running around the country. The total number of jobs/visits completed by Care & Repair are as follows:

In November 2009, Age Action completed an eight-month pilot programme of visiting older people in nursing homes. The main challenge was to retain volunteers over the full period of the programme. The programme will continue but staffed mainly by local volunteers for daytime visitation only.

Trinity Irish Long-term study on ageing (TILDA)

In 2006, Irish Life agreed to act as anchor sponsor for the first longitudinal study to be undertaken in Ireland called TILDA. In 2007 and 2008, the structures needed to support the study were put in place and additional funding was secured.

In May 2009, President Mary McAleese formally launched the Irish long-term study on ageing (TILDA) at Trinity College Dublin. This also marked the beginning of the public phase of the study, which involves interviewing 8,000 older people every two years to collect detailed information on all aspects of their lives including:

• health – health assessments will be conducted in the TILDA Health Assessment Centre which is equipped with appropriate medical equipment for testing; cardiovascular health , bone density, visual acuity, and cognitive ability among other important medical tests;
• economic – pensions, employment, income and assets; and,
• social – contact with friends and family, formal and informal care, social participation.

permanent tsb Foróige Youth Citizenship Programme

In January 2007, permanent tsb launched a partnership with a major Irish youth organisation, Foróige – the permanent tsb Foróige Youth Citizenship Programme and Awards. The programme consists of youth citizenship projects that young people around Ireland carry out every year to improve their local communities. The EU has recognised this programme as an example of best practice in active citizenship in Europe.

The table below summarises the outcomes over thet three year period to the end of 2009:

In each year, the programme has culminated in a national awards event held at the end of October in Dublin.

permanent tsb has agreed to extend its sponsorship of the youth citizenship programme and awards to the end of 2011.

Employee activities

Our two main businesses, Irish Life and permanent tsb have successful staff charity organisations. Irish Life Staff Charities has been in existence since 1995 and permanent tsb staff charities was set up in 2003 following the creation of the new bank from the merger of Irish Permanent and TSB.

During the past three years, the total funds raised by the staff charities was €436,000 and of this €409,000 was matched by the company, giving a combined total of €845,000.

Members of staff are invited to nominate charities of their choice for support each year. Since it began in 1995, Irish Life Staff Charities has supported a range of organisations including:

• Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Dublin
• Cystic Fibrosis - Hopesource
• National Rehabilitation Hospital
• Downs Syndrome Ireland

The charities benefiting in 2009 were:

Irish Life

• Laura Brennan Trust
• Niall Mellon Township Trust

permanent tsb

• Irish Pilgrimage Trust
• Cork ARC Cancer support

In 2009, Springboard Mortgages raised more than €5,500 for their charity of the year- the CARI Foundation (Children At Risk in Ireland).

Staff can also make donations to Staff Charities through payroll deduction.

Ethnic entrepreneurs

Between 2007 and 2009, permanent tsb were title sponsors of the first Ethnic Entrepreneur Awards to be held in Ireland. These awards were developed by Chinedu Onyejelem, publisher of Metro Eireann Newspaper.

The first awards ceremony was held in Dublin in 2007 and the awards were presented by President Mary McAleese. The winner and the first permanent tsb Ethnic Entrepreneur of the Year was Rita Shah, a Kenyan businesswoman who set up Shabra Plastics in Monagahan in 1986 that has now become the main recycler of plastic waste in Ireland.

The second awards were held in April 2008. The winner of the overall award was Asheesh Dewan, founder of the Jaipur Indian restaurant chain that started in 1998.

The third permanent tsb Ethnic Entrepreneur Awards were held in October 2009. 2009 was the final year of permanent tsb’s sponsorship of the awards and the winner was Darryl Ismail, founder of Chase International, an online travel wholesaler.

Corporate donations

In 2009, we made donations, mostly for small amounts, totalling €158,000 to a large number of organisations in line with our corporate donations policy including:

• The Irish Cancer Society
• Peter McVerry Trust
• Business2Arts
• Inner City Senior Citizens Fund
• Threshold
• The Lourdes Day Care Centre

Employee volunteering

Our employees are involved in volunteering activities under a number of company programmes as follows:

Youth work

For the past three years, employees from permanent tsb have volunteered to work with Foróige youth clubs around the country. At the end of 2009, there were 15 active volunteers involved in a variety of activities.

Student mentoring programme

In 2009, we completed the fourth year of our mentoring programme with Patrician College, Dublin as part of the Business in the Community Ireland School’s Business Partnership. Twenty Irish Life & Permanent employees mentored students from the senior cycle classes in the school.

Over the past three years we have sponsored the school to enable them to run an after school study programme for students in examinations classes. In 2009, we extended the sponsorship to allow the school to run a homework club for first and second years.

Homelessness

Employees of Irish Life Corporate Business visit a day centre for homeless people in Dublin (the Capuchin Day Centre) on one day a week to help in providing meals and handing out food parcels.

The Social Finance Foundation

The Social Finance Foundation is a not-for-profit company set up by the Government to make funding available at affordable rates for social finance projects. Typical projects include community centres, childcare support, community sporting facilities, disability facilities and addiction treatment centres.

The Foundation was incorporated in January 2007 and received seed funding of €25m from the banking sector. Irish Life & Permanent’s contribution was €3.1m. In April 2009, the Foundation signed a new, 12-year loan agreement with the country’s retail banks that will meet its future funding requirements.

At the end of 2008, Irish Life & Permanent employed almost 5,500 people throughout the group, mainly in our two retail businesses, Irish Life and permanent tsb.