A charitable foundation set up by businessman JP McManus donated more than €17 million to causes in Ireland and abroad over the past three years, according to the Irish Times.
Accounts filed to the Companies Registration Office show that the JP McManus Charitable Foundation Limited, which has been in existence since 2000, donated a total of €10,728,275 to charities last year.
Some €2,459,643 was donated in 2007, and €4,141,725 in 2006, according to the foundations’s accounts.
Of the €17.3 million donated in 2006-2008, more than €3 million went directly to causes in his home county of Limerick. The remainder went to charities in Ireland and overseas.
In 2005, Mr McManus raised a further €31 million for projects in the midwest through his Invitational Pro-Am, which involved, among others, world number one golfer Tiger Woods.
A prominent figure in the racing industry, Mr McManus visits Ireland regularly from his base in Geneva, Switzerland, and is non-resident for tax purposes.
The two largest allocations of funds through his foundation last year were to the All-Ireland Scholarship Fund (€6.3 million) and the Paddy Harrington golf scholarships (€2 million), which was set up in memory of Irish golfer Padraig Harrington’s father.
The board of the foundation meets several times each year, and last week was examining 40 projects for possible funding; but the indications are that it has less money to distribute.
