A charity appeal on the Late Late Toy Show has raised more than €5 million for children's charities in Ireland.
The Toy Show, which featured appearances from Irish Olympic gold medallist Kellie Harrington and Ed Sheeran, has so far raised €5,045,926 for the Community Foundation for Ireland.
The foundation will distribute the donations among dozens of Irish children's charities in the coming months.
Revolut co-founder Vlad Yatsenko has also pledged to match any further donations over the weekend up to €1 million.
The Ukrainian billionaire has already donated €100,000 to the appeal Revolut experienced technical difficulties when Late Late Toy Show viewers flooded the banking app to donate to the campaign.
"What an incredible support @RevolutApp customers gave to a worthy charity @RTELateLateShow!" Yatsenko said on Twitter.
"Granted, there were some challenges at the peek of the live campaign. So, I've personally donated €100K, and will also match any further donations this weekend via @RevolutApp up to €1M."
What an incredible support @RevolutApp customers gave to a worthy charity @RTELateLateShow! Granted, there were some challenges at the peek of the live campaign. So, I've personally donated €100K, and will also match any further donations this weekend via @RevolutApp up to €1M.
— Vlad Yatsenko (@vyatsenko) November 27, 2021
RTÉ partnered with Revolut to raise funds for the Toy Show appeal.
Online payments company Stripe, which is co-founded by Irish brothers John and Patrick Collison, experienced similar technical difficulties during last year's Late Late Toy Show appeal, which raised €6.6 million for children's charities.
The volume of donations was so high that Stripe momentarily struggled to process the money coming in, prompting Patrick Collison to announce that the company "just 5x’d the capacity" for the campaign.
Both Collison brothers donated €100,000 to last year's Toy Show appeal.
The Late Late Toy Show appeal was launched last year after 2020 guest Saoirse Ruane told host Ryan Tubridy about how her leg was amputed due to bone cancer in the tibia.
The eight-year-old stole Irish hearts when she revealed that she had raised more money than was needed for the procedure and decided to donate the excess funds to charities and hospitals that had helped her.
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