THE PIONEER Total Abstinence Association has thanked the public for helping it “to avoid national closure”.
Chief executive Pádraig Brady said it was “deeply grateful to its members and particularly to the people of Ireland for giving so generously to us in our hour of need”. Thanks to them “the association has been spared imminent closure”, he said.
The first national appeal in the association’s 113-year history raised almost €108,000. Mr Brady said, however, that “the association remains under financial pressure. While our appeal target of €300,000 has not been reached, the association is very appreciative of the support it has received to date at a time when the pressure and stress of economic worries and hardship are felt daily across Irish society”.
Although the appeal was due to close in August, “we are still receiving donations. As a result, the association has decided to extend its appeal deadline until the end of 2011. The goodwill shown to us during this appeal is a valuable endorsement of the pioneers and their work on tackling alcohol and drug abuse.”
The PTAA was founded by Jesuit priest Fr James Cullen and four women in 1898 at the St Francis Xavier Church on Dublin’s Gardiner Street.
Though never intended to be a mass movement, its numbers were said to be in the region of 500,000 at one stage. “Fr Cullen intended that one or two in a family would see abstinence as a vocation, along the lines of the priesthood. It was to be based more on spirituality,” said Mr Brady yesterday.
Pioneer membership is estimated at 125,000-150,000 today, he said, most of whom are in their 50s and 60s.
