Tullamore salon owner behind Frontline Give Back Day initiative

Hairdressers and beauty therapists around Ireland are to join forces to give thanks to frontline workers when the Covid-19 restrictions are lifted.

Olivia Murray, owner of Opium Skin & Beauty in Tullamore, Co Offaly, is the brains behind Frontline Give Back Day (#frontlinegivebackday), which will see salons offer a day of free treatments to the healthcare staff.

She originally put the call-out on Instagram for other businesses to join the initiative and the post has inspired hair and beauty salons and barbers all around the country to join in.

Now there is a dedicated Frontline Give Back Day Facebook page, along with a website www.frontlinegivebackday.com, where anyone interested in taking part can register. “Please share the initiative with any frontline worker to let them know we are all rooting for them and planning something special to treat them when we are safely out of this pandemic,” Olivia and her team posted on her own salon’s page.

“Our small social media post has gone to Letterkenny, West Cork, Galway, Nenagh, Birr, to the north, south, east and west. It has just spread,” she told RTE, adding that she is hoping that this can become a national day of pampering for Ireland's frontline healthcare workers.

“Six to eight weeks after normality resumes, the salons that have signed up to #frontlinegivebackday will open their doors on a Sunday, a day we are normally closed. So it will just be a day just for the frontline workers to show how grateful we all are in Ireland for all our superheroes.”