Danske Bank donates £12,000 to local charities for Christmas

Danske Bank has donated £12,000 to five local charities, with employees and customers voting to select important charities in Northern Ireland for a Christmas windfall this week.

Local charity Almost Home Animal Rescue has been given a £5,000 donation right before Christmas thanks to the staff and customers of Danske Bank. The bank ran an online poll to select the beneficiaries of this year's donation, and Almost Home came top of the list. Runners up Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice and Air Ambulance received £3,000 and £2,000 donations respectively, and Foyle Search and Rescue and Alzheimer’s Society Northern Ireland both received £1,000 each.

Almost Home Animal Rescue was set up in 2013 with the goal of saving neglected and abandoned animals, and giving them a chance of happiness. The charity currently looks after a wide variety of animals including around 100 dogs and 50 cats, and this donation will be used to expand its cattery to support more abandoned cats.

"Christmas is a tough time for animal shelters," explained the charity's founder, Karen Matthews, adding that "it’s a really busy period for us, but all of the hard work is worth it when you see the animals heading off to their forever homes." It's been a pretty good year for Danske Bank's Northern Ireland division, which recently reported a pre-tax profit of around £67.4 million in the first nine months of 2018.