A 100-year-old woman yesterday donated her £2,000 centenarian's cheque to Focus Ireland for the benefit of the homeless. Mrs Elizabeth Kennedy, who was born in Killucan, Co Westmeath, in 1900, presented the cheque to Sister Stanislaus Kennedy at a ceremony in Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital, Dublin.
"It's a terrible thing to think anybody should be living rough in Dublin," Mrs Kennedy told The Irish Times.
Sister Stanislaus said it was "a great example to young people in Ireland that a woman of your age decided to do this".
Mrs Kennedy, who always wanted to live in Dublin, spent most of her life in the country. She was 72 years old before she achieved her ambition. Her parents, Thomas and Margaret O'Reilly, had a small farm - her father was a building contractor.
She studied domestic economy at the Munster Institute, Cork, and went on to become a dairy and poultry instructor.
However, before she could take up a career she had to return to Killucan to nurse her mother. She later married Simon Kennedy, a Co Kilkenny farmer. They farmed at Posey, near Graiguenamanagh, until his death in 1962, when she went to live in Naas, Co Kildare.
When asked if she retired in that year, she replied: "A woman never retires."
She spent 10 years in Naas before moving to Frankfort Avenue, Rathgar and lived there until she was 98, when she moved into Sir Patrick Dun's. The hospital was reopened by the Eastern Health Board in 1997 as a residential and day-care service for older people.
Hospital staff yesterday presented her with a certificate for a tree, which is to be planted in her name at Birr Castle demesne.