A family from Carrigaline, Co Cork are hoping to raise €100,000 for their three-year-old daughter Ellie, who has cerebral palsy.

She needs a crucial operation so she can walk unaided.

Ellie's mother Amy explained her condition to Lunchtime Live.

"The issue with cerebral palsy is that it causes high spasticity in the body, and unfortunately for Ellie it affects her legs which means she can't walk.

"So even though Ellie's three and a half, she must crawl around to get from A to B and she has no independence then when we're in the outside world."

Amy said the specialist operation is only available in the US.

"We must go, privately pay for Ellie to go to Dr Parks over in St Louis, who is a world-renounced surgeon.

"[He] has created this, I guess, fantastic operation that will cut nerves in her spine in order to release her of the spasticity in her legs, and allow her hen to build muscle.

"And hopefully, once those neuropathways are firing, she will take steps".

Ellie Boyhan and her mother Amy. Picture: Supplied

Amy said they have been blown away by the response.

"We need to fundraise in order to get her to America for the actual procedure itself, but then with this procedure comes a lot of therapy.

"So she will have intensive therapy for three years afterwards that must be funded privately.

"Even though there are supports in place, pre-COVID anyway there were supports in place through Enable, it's just not enough for us.

"So we will have to privately fund intensive therapy with her, occupation therapy and physiotherapy in order to support her to reach her goal and I guess to become as strong as she possibly can.

"We know it's a very difficult time for people, I guess what we're looking to do is just to spread the message out there for people to hear our story, to hear about Ellie's dream to dance.

"Even if you can't support if you could just share the word, because there are people out there who maybe able to do that for us".

"It's unbelievable, our community has just been so supportive, they've just rallied around us.

"You wouldn't believe the amount of people who are contacting us from around the world, saying 'we worked with your husband' or 'we know someone in your family'.

"We're still not quite there, if you could just even give a small amount.

"Your cup of coffee from today would just really make that huge difference to us.

"Once we're there we can let the hospital know, pay in advance and get Ellie over to America as soon as possible".

Donations can be made here