The St. John Ambulance Brigade has a long established history in Ireland. It began in Dublin in 1903 and later in Cork in 1934. It is a voluntary and charitable organisation where its members give freely of their time, training the community in First Aid and providing medical cover for most major events such as GAA, Rugby, Racing and major public gatherings. The St John Ambulance in Cork has grown from strength to strength where the membership is now over 160 members. Due to the increased demand on its services, the St. John Ambulance Brigade in Cork decided to expand into the East Cork area as there is a very large active community there. This has always been key to the success of the organisation.

A community Open Day was held on 15th May 2011, which saw hundreds of people in the local community finding out all about St. John Ambulance and also learnt a few First Aid skills on the day. Great support has been given by the Glanmire Community College management and staff, as all the training has been carried out in the Community College.  Following the Open Day a First Aid course was run and the students were trained in First Aid over a number of weeks. Separate courses were run for the Adults and Children aged  11 – 16 year. During their training the students learned new skills such as, how to manage a person having a heart attack, cardiac arrest, stroke, etc.  Part of the new adult member’s skills was training on how to use an Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) in the event of a patient in cardiac arrest. All the training came to fruition when 22 Adults and 16 Children from East Cork signed on to The St. John Ambulance on Wednesday 10th August 2011 and became members of this great voluntary organisation.

 Over the next few weeks, they will be prepared for their first duty within the community. As members of St. John, they will train on a weekly basis to help them further their training and be part of the continuous development through the levels of Cardiac First Responder, Emergency First Responder (EFR), and Emergency Medical Technician (EMT). Since we established this new Division in Glanmire, we have received numerous requests to run another First Aid Course. To support this request, we will run a Basic First Aid course in the Glanmire Community College on Wednesday nights, starting on 14th September 2011. It will run for seven weeks from 19.00 to 21.00. There will be two courses run on each night one for Adults and the other for Children ( 11 – 16 years). The costs of the courses are ; €100 for the Adult course and €50 for the Children’s course, which includes a student pack and First Aid manual. If you are interested in learning First Aid and completing this First Aid course please E-Mail your contact details to   This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it   or contact Ger Doyle on 086 0699086.