A Galway-born firefighter – the fourth generation in his family to join the service – helped to highlight another act of courage that also changed a life…celebrating the time he donated a kidney to his brother.

Ger Dolan joined an estimated 1,600 people from across Ireland and beyond, including hundreds of families of deceased donors and transplant recipients, at the Church of the Holy Child in Whitehall on Dublin’s Northside on Saturday for the Irish Kidney Association 39th Annual Service of Remembrance & Thanksgiving.

Ger, from the Claddagh in Galway and stationed at Anglesea Fire Station in Cork city, donated a kidney to his brother Jimmy in 2017 – three months before his 18-year-old cousin Orla tragically died.

Her family selflessly donated four of Orla’s organs – this saving four lives.

Dolores – Orla’s mother and Ger’s aunt – travelled from Cross, in Co Mayo to also participate in the Service by carrying the Book of Remembrance, the roll of honour in which Orla’s and other organ donors’ names are inscribed, to the altar.

Caption: Firefighter and kidney donor Ger Dolan, from the Claddagh, who is stationed at Anglesea Fire Station in Cork city, with his aunt Dolores O’Malley, from Cross, Co Mayo – mother of Orla’s whose organs were donated after her tragic dearth in a fatal road crash – at the Irish Kidney Association 39th Annual Service of Remembrance & Thanksgiving.

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