Donate a gift card for Temple Street - Christmas 2022

Another difficult Christmas lies ahead for so many families.

While most of us will be celebrating with family and friends , others less fortunate will not have the means to bring Santa to their kids, or indeed to put Christmas dinner on the table.

This is where you come in every year without fail, and I hope this year will be no different

Many of you know that my beautiful twin daughter Lizzie died in 2001 when she was 15 months old. The support we received from the social workers in Temple Street helped us through a very difficult time. That Christmas, Ian & I wanted to do something in her honour, so with the help of our friends & colleagues in Sherry Fitz, we set up a toy appeal with Temple Street Children’s Hospital.

Every Christmas since then we have delivered toys and food vouchers to the social workers in the hospital. These gifts go to disadvantaged families whose children are either in hospital or attending on an outpatient basis. The social workers have described our collection as a “small ray of light” at a very difficult time for these children and their families.

To kick us off again this year, Sherry Fitz will be putting Christmas dinner on the table for 50 families through our company donation of Tesco food gift cards. These families will also receive Smyths gift cards which will go some way to ease the burden of Santa

For the past two years, COVID restrictions prevented us from bringing toys into the hospital as the social workers could not invite families in to choose toys for their children. They have asked me to do the same this year as they are still restricting large numbers through the hospital. So again this year, I hope you will buy a gift card – we need gifts for boys and girls of all ages, so I am suggesting gift cards from Smyths, Toymaster, Penney’s ( for the teenagers), Boots or ARGOS. These cards worked really well for us last year, and the hospital was delighted to be able to post some of them to families outside of Dublin.

Alternatively, I am happy to shop on your behalf, which is where this fundraising comes in. I am suggesting a €10 donation as this is usually a reasonable price point for a toy

All money raised here will be used to purchase gift cards

I will be making a trip to the hospital early this year to give parents time to go shopping, so my cut-off for donations and gift cards is Monday, 12th December

I really appreciate any help you can provide.

Jill