Only in Ireland when you turn 100

Keep Your Commendations - I'll Take CASH

In 1940, most of the world wasn’t worried about living to be a hundred years old. Hitler was on the march. Democracies were in danger. Living a long life was not top of mind. 

In Ireland that year, President Douglas Hyde launched a program to send natives of Ireland who reached the century mark cash payments. Not that there were a lot of them in those days. 

Called the Centenarian Bounty (CB), which sounds like a payment for capturing 100-year-olds on the lam, the President's scheme proved popular and was tweaked in 1973 and 2006. Today, anyone born on the island of Ireland who lives to be 100 will receive a cash payment of 2540 euros ($2915.83). 

Even if they don’t live in the Republic of Ireland, they’ve got a check coming when their odometer clicks past 99. Here's the official application, just in case.

George and Ruby Moore on the occasion of their 100th birthdays with the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, Right Reverend Dr Richard Murray, and Rev Barry McCroskery, minister at McCracken Memorial Presbyterian Church, Belfast. It was also their 66th wedding anniversary. Local clergy often deliver the Centenarian Bonus on behalf of the President of Ireland.(Photo courtesy of the Moore family) 

That’s right. You don’t have to live in the Republic of Ireland to qualify. You just have to be born on the island. More than half of the payments doled out last year went to super agers in County Antrim, home to Belfast. That means the taxpayers of the Republic sent 500,000 euros of payments north of the border. Either they’re living longer in the North or are better at applying for the CB.

Eight out of ten of the payments last year went to women. “This is because women look after themselves better, and are less likely to smoke and drink,” according to one editorial. Or women are better at taking care of this kind of business. And for what it’s worth, a disproportionate number of women applicants – 16% - were named Mary or a variation of that name (Máire, Maureen, May, Máirín, Rosemary etc.) 

Ireland is the only nation to offer cash payments to those who survive to see their double golden day. Japan used to hand out sterling silver cups but switched to silver plated cups. It got too expensive. Too many Japanese living 100 years and longer. Oregon, like most states, offers no more than recognition. New Mexico at least exempts centenarians from personal income tax.  

To Qualify You Must be Alive

The man wearing the mask is Donald O’Callaghan Jr. of Cork. He’s leaving the Court House on Anglesea Street. He’s just been sentenced to 3.5 years in prison because in 2020 he claimed the Centenarian Bounty cash payment for his father, Don Sr., who died in 1987. He committed many more crimes than that, but he got caught when the office of President Michael T. Higgins sent an email regarding his father. 

That email instructed a Social Welfare Inspector to check to make sure Don Sr. was alive. Calls were made. First to the home. Don Jr. answered and assured the Inspector that his da was indeed still alive at 100. But the next call to the local health department turned up no record of anyone by that name.  

Suspicious, the Inspector called the Garda (police officer) who works with the Department of Social Protection. Detective Michael Nagle dug deeper. He visited some of Cork’s cemeteries and found the gravesite of Don Sr. He surveilled the house where the O’Callaghan family had been living for decades. No sign of the old man. But he did observe the younger O’Callaghan walking to the GPO on Oliver Plunkett Street where he picked up his father’s bi-weekly 962 euros ($1100) government pension check. On camera. Det. Nagle made the arrest. 

It turns out Don Jr. had made the same trip to the GPO 1,700 times over 33 years and collected more than 500,000 euros ($574,000). “Mr. O'Callaghan pleaded guilty to 73 sample counts of social welfare fraud, dating back over three decades. Sixty-eight counts relate to theft while five refer to false documentation in support of the fraudulent claims,” reported the Irish Times. He also received unemployment benefits for thirty years. The Garda found 9800 euros ($11,250) at the house. He told the judge he’d spent most of the money on his gambling habit. And some of it supporting his son in Cork and some on four trips a year to Thailand where he has another son. 

It was one of the largest and longest running cases of welfare fraud in the history of Ireland. And it was cracked because of the Centenarian Bounty and a thorough investigation by Irish Welfare authorities. 

Why hasn’t this been turned into a true crime podcast in Ireland by now?

Go raibh maith aguish go lair, agus bar lagaidh dia blur lumbago deo!

(Thank you very much and may God bless you with a long life!)

A cent'anni!

(To a hundred years in Italian)