New York police officer Denis Mulcahy, an Irish immigrant, together with family and friends, started a scheme in 1975 to give children from Northern Ireland some respite from the violence of their daily lives.  Denis told Dave Fanning – sitting in for Ryan Tubridy – that it was while watching coverage on television of what was happening in Northern Ireland that he and his brother Pat decided they should do something about it.

"The concept was quite simple: that we would bring some kids out of there during the summer and get them out of there during the marching season and hopefully make a difference."

One of the children the Mulcahy brothers' Project Children initiative helped was Kevin Brady. He told Dave what it was like for him as a kid growing up in the early 70s in Northern Ireland. Although difficult to imagine now, then there was continual violence or the threat of violence:

"You lived with the threat of death on a regular and daily basis."

Kevin, a Catholic, went on his first trip organised by Project Children at age 9 to a family that were also hosting a young Protestant boy, John. Kevin told Dave that, although they only lived about five minutes' walk from each other in Belfast, he and John would never have met there.

"There was like an invisible line you do not cross from the Catholic into the Protestant area."

The two boys from separate parts of Belfast spent six weeks in New York and they got on very well together and they're still friends forty years later. John was best man at Kevin's wedding.

Denis Mulcahy lived in a place called Greenlake in upstate New York and was part of an Irish cultural society. The Project Children idea was to bring kids over from Northern Ireland and Denis says, it started slowly, because they were uncertain about funding – all the money came from small donations at fundraising events – but it gradually gained an impressive momentum.

"It was a simple programme that basically went on for over 40 years and benefitted over 23,000 kids."

A documentary, How to Diffuse a Bomb: The Project Children Story, directed by Des Henderson, telling the untold story of Denis and Pat's remarkable charity, was shown on RTÉ One on Monday night and can be watched on the RTÉ Player

You can hear the full discussion with Denis and Kevin and listen back to the rest of The Ryan Tubridy Show here.