Keep an eye out for a thick envelope on your door mat from 8th May

Special Promotion: All junior accounts opened in May will receive €10 from us.
Terms & conditions: The junior account must have at least €10 in it by the payment date of end September 2013.

Our Junior Art & Design Competitions:

Tadpoles

We are sending out a picture for you to colour in using the crayons and paint we’ve sent you. Send it into us by the end of June & your artwork could feature in our lovely new offices, & better still, you could win a prize!

Dragons & Fat Cats

We invite you to send us in a picture, photo or video around the subject ‘my people’ by the end of June & we’ll have some prizes for our favourite. We’ll also share them on our website, our Facebook & Twitter pages.

Summer time tips

This article is the first in a series of tips from your credit union to help our members to enjoy hassle-free holidays. Whether you’re holidaying at home or abroad, we aim to bring you some tips on lots of holiday-related topics, from water saftety, to packing, to travelling with kids, to managing your money abroad & more!

Water Safety; drowning

A lot of our summer activities revolve around water, whether it be a paddling pool in the back garden, a stroll by the canal or a dip in the ocean. Water, in all its forms, including a shallow bath, needs to be treated with respect and caution.

According to the Irish Water Safety (www.iws.ie)on average 140 people drown in Ireland each year. ‘Most of these tragic deaths happen inland, in rivers and lakes, on farms and in and around homes and these accidents are preventable.’

Arming yourself with some important facts about drowning could save someone’s life, or better still, prevent an incident altogether.

The Instinctive Drowning Response – so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D., is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water. And it does not look like most people expect.

Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. Most of us have seen the dramatic television images of people drowning; the yelling, splashing, thrashing around in the water. However, this is rarely seen in real life.

Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help as they are fighting to breathe. Drowning people cannot wave for help. Their instinct is to press down on the surface of the water to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe. They have such a short window to exhale and inhale before their mouths descend below the surface, that they simply do not have the time to shout.

Signs of drowning:

• Head low in the water, mouth at water level.

• Head tilted back with mouth open

• Eyes glassy and empty, unable to focus

• Eyes closed

• Hair over forehead or eyes

• Not using legs – Vertical

• Hyperventilating or gasping

• Trying to swim in a particular direction but not making headway

• Trying to roll over on the back

How to react:

VOICE!
Seek assistance – Shout for HELP.

Instruct another to dial 999 or 112 and ask for Marine Rescue.

Use your voice to calm the casualty and issue instructions and encouragement to assist them to a place of safety. There may be no rescue equipment available.

REACH
If this fails then use a coat, branch of a tree, brush handle or other available rescue aid to complete a reaching rescue.

THROW
When available always use Public Rescue Equipment e.g. ringbuoy, lifebelt or throw rope.

WADE
If the location allows conduct a wading rescue with care and only if you are a trained lifesaver.

How to enjoy water activities safely

Water activities are tremendous fun, and if you pay attention to what you or your loved ones are doing in the water, it can be a rewarding and enjoyable experience. One of the top tips to stay safe in or around water is observation. Observe where you or your loved one is swimming. Are there safety sign or warnings in the area? Is there a life guard on duty? Is there any life saving equipment in the vicinity? Remember that children’s arm bands or other flotation devices are no substitute for observation. For further advice on water safety visit the Irish Water Safety www.iws.ie or for kids a good site is www.aquaattack.ie.

Sources
Irish Water Safety    www. iws.ie
Mario Vittone’s www.gcaptain.com

Holiday Loans

If you  are looking for a holiday loan, remember that your credit union offers one of the most competitive rates in the market @ only 8.9% APR%. Take a look at our Loan Calculator to see what your repayments on a holiday loan might be.

Car: Lyndsey O’Reilly, AMNCH

Trip for 2 to Barcelona: Deborah Molloy Henessey, AMNCH

5 prizes of €1,000 each:
Carlis O Rourke, Dept of Social Protection
Mary Purcell,  St. Michael’s, Baldoyle
Clare Keogh, Coombe Women & Children’s University Hospital
Wilma Patlong, Beacon Hospital
Eileen Hopkins, HSE

To sign up for our monthly car draw & be in with a chance to win one of the monthly prizes above click here. It’s a not-for-profit draw & entry is just €2.54 every 4 weeks.

Join a Friend: Tim Neville, Leopardstown Park Hospital won €100 for joining a friend.
Join a friend who works in the health services or Law Library, or a family member who lives at your address & you could be next quarter’s winner! Click here to download a JAF form.

eZine quarterly winner: Mary Vanessa Lynch Davis won a weekend away with Irish Country Hotels.
You can sign up for our eZine today & maybe win the next weekend away or 2! Click here

To use this facility you must first have an Online Account with us. If you don’t have one yet, you can register today. Register

Once in the secure member area, go to the menu on the left of the page and choose Card Payment.

Simples!

Have you downloaded our cuAnywhere app yet? It’s suitable for iPhone and android enabled devices.

This is FREE for members to download from the App store and Google Play. To download it click on your phone store below.

• Access your accounts from anywhere 24×7
• Pay bills at a time convenient to you
• Transfer funds to different accounts
• View all your account balances
• Scroll quickly through your transaction history
• Check out the latest News from HSSCU

Please note: you will have to register for an online account on our home page before you can access your account using cuAnywhere. The username, pin and passphrase you use to login to your online account on our website are the same login details for cuAnywhere.

Susan Graydon, AMNCH, won the car;

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Francis Bell, St. James’s Hospital, won a champagne theatre trip to London for 2 + €500 spending money;

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Colin Kavanagh, HSE, won our Pay your Bills for 1 year prize (worth €12,000);

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And our 5 x €1,000 winners are

Deirdre Fitzgerald, HSE;
Raymond Muldoon, Stewarts,
Eoin Darcy, HSE;
Elizabeth Gallagher,
Paul Beggs, ACACIA.

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To download a Car Draw Entry From please click here

As much as we would love to invite all 24,000 members to this event, it’s simply not feasible.  Though we’ve expanded our building it’s not quite that big….yet!  So, instead we offer all of our members the opportunity to let us know why you would like to attend, and we will choose 20 entrants to represent our members on the night.

Simply, drop us a few lines by email/fax/post, telling us a little bit about yourself and why you would like to be a part of this event. The closing date for entries is 15th March.

Faxes can be sent to 01 6778664. Emails to info@hsscu.ie. Letters to 5 High St., Christchurch, Dublin 8

Did you know that if you opt to recieve eStatements rather than statements by post, you will no longer recieve a quarterly copy of our ‘Kredit’ newsletter?

But, you can opt to recieve our new monthly eZine, which will keep you updated on any new products, services, rate changes, deadlines, competitions & more!

We will hold a draw every quarter for all eZine subcribers. Our first draw will be held in the next few days, so sign up today.

eZine Sign Up
Just think this time next week you could be the winner of a lovely 2 night break in one of Manor House of Irish Country Hotels.

We pay the winning member’s bills for 1 year (up to €12,000)!

For more info on all of the cars, holidays & cash prizes in our monthly Car Draw click here

Best of luck!