Later this year, a charity rally featuring internationally renowned sports legends will tour the southwest of Ireland to raise funds for CRITICAL, the emergency medical response charity.
Déjà vu Cork '23 will see 150 historic rallying and supercars depart Little Island on September 9 and travel 225km, taking in many well-known Cork 20 and West Cork Rally special stages. It is the ninth event in a series that has raised over €300,000 for charity to date.
The non-competitive rally will include a lunchtime parade through the streets of Clonakilty and will conclude with a gala dinner at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Cork. The event's proceeds will be donated to CRITICAL.
Through its volunteer Emergency Medical Responders network, the CRITICAL charity provides pre-hospital emergency care to critically ill and injured patients in their communities. The charity currently has teams in Mayo, Donegal and Dublin and will soon include Meath, Kildare, Wicklow, Waterford and North Cork. It is also looking to expand its Volunteer Responders network into more local communities over the next year.
It costs €25,000 on average to establish an advanced-level Volunteer Doctor in the community and €120,000 to purchase a new Critical Care response vehicle.
Micheál Sheridan, CEO of CRITICAL, said, "Our volunteers are tasked to serious incidents by the National Ambulance Service. We've kitted out their Critical Care response vehicles with a specialist medical kit essentially bringing the Emergency Department to the patient. The equipment, which is entirely funded by donors and wonderful fundraising events like this, allows our critical and advanced care doctors to use their many years of experience to perform complex and often life saving medical procedures at the scene. We're honoured to be chosen by Déjà vu as the beneficiaries of their Cork rally as it will help us to expand our services to even more communities across the country. We're often called to road traffic incidents and fundraising events like this help us to bring hope to people when time is critical."
Déjà vu Motorsport was founded in 2016 by two retired motorsports fans, Alan 'Plum' Tyndall (creator of the motorsports TV show RPM) and former rally co-driver Beatty Crawford.
Alan Tyndall said: "We are delighted to support CRITICAL, the emergency medical response charity. Many people will know it as the charity responsible for setting up the Irish Community Air Ambulance and proving how vital that service is. Now the priority is bringing Critical and Advanced levels of care to more communities. As they are using specially prepared cars for their innovative response vehicles, it seems appropriate that our enthusiastic motorsport orientated entrants will be supporting this very worthwhile initiative."