This year, ten IMPACT members and officials cycled between Limerick city and the union’s biennial May conference in Killarney. The union’s central executive committee agreed to match funds generously donated by IMPACT members and branches.

The money raised will be divided equally among three cancer research and awareness organisations: The Arc Cancer Support Centre in Dublin, the Milford Hospice Foundation in Limerick, and the Kerry Hospice Foundation.

Thanking cyclists and those who donated, event organiser Dessie Robinson said some of the cash would go towards a new 15-bed unit being planned for Tralee by the Kerry Hospice Foundation. “Without the generosity of IMPACT delegates at conference, our branches and the union centrally we could not have raised such significant amounts of money. This will make such as difference,” he said.

In previous years money raised by the event has gone to suicide awareness groups and rape crisis centres.