The Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS; also Irish Red Cross or IRC; ) is the National Red Cross Society for the Republic of Ireland. (Northern Ireland comes under the aegis of the British Red Cross.) The society was formally established on 6 July 1939 under the Red Cross Act 1938. It is affiliated to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The society is organised on a voluntary basis. In Ireland, its activities include mountain rescue, first aid education of the public, the provision of first aid and ambulance services at public events, as well as other community services for older people, carers, migrants and prisoners. Outside Ireland, the society provides relief and humanitarian services in response to natural disasters and in regions of conflict.
History
Precursors
The City of Dublin Branch of the British Red Cross Society was established in August 1914 on the outbreak of the First World War at a meeting convened by the Lady Aberdeen, wife of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and presided over by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Lorcan Sherlock. The interlinking of national military and Red Cross organisations complicated operation during the Irish revolutionary period. The republican women's organisation Cumann na mBan was modelled on the French Red Cross; in 1914 it tried to affiliate to the International Red Cross but was told to join to the British Red Cross. During the 1916 Rising, members of Cumann na mBan used red cross insignia; some were paramedics while others were military auxiliaries apparently unaware of the Red Cross' requirement for neutrality, whose activities were condemned by the British. The official [British] Red Cross also operated in the Rising, known as "VAD nurses" (Voluntary Aid Detachments) to distinguish them from the republicans. The Irish White Cross was established during the Irish War of Independence by the American Committee for Relief in Ireland. During the ensuing Irish Civil War the British Red Cross felt it was politically unwise to operate so the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) intervened directly.
The Irish branch of the St. John Ambulance Association continued to operate after independence and T. F. O'Higgins suggested in the Dáil debate on the 1938 act that, already recognised under the Geneva Conventions, it might be recognised as the Irish affiliate of the ICRC. The Spanish Civil War (Non-Intervention) Act 1937, which prohibited Irish involvement in the Spanish Civil War, made an exception for units certified by the government as "Red Cross units" where "such unit is organised by or is working under the auspices of a society or organisation (whether established in Saorstát Eireann or in another country) having as its object or one of its objects the furnishing of volunteer aid to the sick and wounded of armies in time of war".
Legal establishment
In 1939 a ministerial order establishing the society was made under the 1938 act. Minor amendments of the 1939 order were made in subsequent decades.
The 1938 act's provision were based on the first three Geneva Conventions, and the act was amended in 1954 and 1998 to reflect the state's accession to the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention and 1977 Protocol I and Protocol II additions.
Early decades
Between 1940 and 1945, ten sweepstake horseraces organised by the Irish Hospitals' Sweepstake raised £184,000 or 41% of the IRCS's total revenue in the period.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the Irish Red Cross sent a team of 100 to staff a field hospital in Saint-Lô, France, including Samuel Beckett as an interpreter and storekeeper. He described his experiences in "The Capital of the Ruins".
Restrictions on the hire of Red Cross ambulances were introduced in 1955 and removed in 2006.
In the Arms Trial of 1970, it emerged that funds from an Irish Red Cross bank account had been channelled without the society's knowledge to the nascent Provisional IRA. The trial acquitted Charles Haughey, who testified that, when it became clear that the Irish Red Cross would not be permitted to operate in Northern Ireland, money was for relief of victims of sectarian violence was transferred instead to individuals, whose later actions were outside his control.
Post-1990 governance issues
From 1989 the government switched public grant-in-aid of the IRCS from the Department of Defence budget to the National Lottery.