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Ligia donates her €2,540 payment for turning 100 to frontline staff

- Louise Walsh

A woman whose remarkable life included making vaccines celebrated her 100th birthday by donating her cheque from President Higgins to frontline workers.

The Centenarian Bounty of €2,540 is an award from the Government given to people once they reach the milestone age.

Welsh-Serbian-born Ligia Betty Jones donated her cheque to staff in Moorehall Lodge, Ardee, Co Louth, where she currently lives.

Her proud daughter Anna Swan made a scrapbook of her mother’s life as a bacteriologist and botanist, spanning nine countries, and thanked the Irish for adopting her.

Anna brought Ligia Betty – who speaks six languages – to live with her outside Dundalk after she fell in her Italian home and broke her hip in 2013.

Ahead of her mother’s 100th birthday last week, Anna created a scrapbook of her mother’s incredible life, with memorabilia gathered to represent each decade of that century.

She said: “My mother has only been in Ireland a wet weekend and I can’t believe how good and welcoming the Irish have been since she arrived.