BILLIONAIRE JP McManus‘ Invitational Pro-Am, which has brought some of the world’s best golfers and famous stars to Limerick every five years and raised millions for charities, will not go ahead next year.
The decision to call a halt to the country’s biggest charity fundraiser, which raised over €100 million since its inception in 1990, is understood to have been made in the last week after meetings between JP and the committee involved in running the event. It has been reported that Ireland’s tax residency laws were a major bone of contention for McManus as it limited the amount of time he could spend here to organise the Pro-Am.
The star-studded spectacular, which was due to tee off in Limerick in 2015, is now unlikely to go ahead. Over the years the charity event has drawn household names from the worlds of sport and film including Tiger Woods, Michael Douglas, Samuel L Jackson, Padraig Harrington, Gary Lineker, Hugh Grant and Michael Owen to the Mid-West.
The event, was a huge money spinner for the local economy, however, it is the many Limerick charities the Pro-Am raised millions in funding for over the years that will be hardest hit by this week’s news.
Chief executive of Milford Care Centre, Pat Quinlan commented, “We owe JP and the Pro Am Committee an enormous debt of gratitude and fully appreciate the remarkable generosity of his significant support down through the years.”
