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“IF ANYONE in Cork is in need of our services we are open 365 days a year. We never judge. If you’re hungry we’re here.”
So reads the pinned tweet on Cork Penny Dinners’ Twitter account and it’s a fair summation of one of the warmest, kindest places in Ireland.
In 2012, Cork Penny Dinners served about 100 meals a week. Now it’s over 1,800. That’s a staggering increase and it puts the lie to any pre-election spin that things are getting better.
Penny Dinners volunteers say they are serving meals now to people they never saw before, not “just” homeless people or those with drug or alcohol dependency.
Now they are feeding people who have jobs, families with small children, people just about paying their mortgage or meeting the rent and who can’t afford food.
Penny Dinners also supplies a weekly shop to several households, literally to put food on the family table.
If you’ve never heard of Cork Penny Dinners, it’s a walk-in service for everyone and anyone who might be in need of a hot meal.
Usually located on Little Hanover Street, at the moment it resides – temporarily – around the corner in a disused print works on Gravel Lane, within sight of the Courthouse.
Cork legend has it Penny Dinners was founded by the Quakers as a Famine soup kitchen but – according to those working there today – the truth may have been more prosaic.
Certainly, Quakers have been involved over the years, as have members “of all faiths and none” but the best theory I heard is it was probably founded by whoever was willing to help at the time and the details filled themselves in afterwards. Like a lot of the best things in life.
Open arms
Regardless of how Cork Penny Dinners got here, though, the important thing is if you’re hungry, or lonely, or just need a place to sit down for a while, you’re welcome.
I visited Gravel Lane the other morning and was struck – even more than usually – by how busy it is.
To the left are four long tables and each one is full. Some people are dressed shabbily – and I immediately hate myself for noticing – but most people are dressed (in that most Irish of words) “respectably”.
The helpings on every plate are generous and the food looks and smells delicious.
Some people look up from their meals, curious at a new face but friendly and indifferent in equal measure. To the right is the kitchen, where volunteers bustle about, weaving in and out of each other’s way in a ballet of clatter and steam.
The reason for the temporary relocation is that – thanks in part to RTÉ’s At Your Service and paid for entirely by local businesses – Cork Penny Dinners’ home is being completely refitted.
The programme will be shown over Christmas, and Penny Dinners co-ordinator Caitriona Twomey says she hopes it will help to raise awareness of the work they do.
Caitriona tells me that in Penny Dinners, class and creed end at the door and nobody judges anyone here, not the volunteers and certainly not the clients.
Some volunteers deliver food to clients’ homes, so those clients can avoid the stigma of being seen to need charity. There’s a genuine respect here for the dignity of each person who calls in and that’s reflected in the first-name friendliness shared by all.
There is a wonderful informality to the place and sometimes a blurring of the lines between who is a client and who is a volunteer. Often, those who once needed a meal return to help those walking that same road now.
There’s a sense of place and a sense of belonging and Caitriona says that’s exactly as it should be.
Everyone gets a chance and everyone gets to feel a little bit better about themselves.
New poor
On my way out, I meet a Cork Corporation worker who tells me he and his colleagues have been delighted to assist with the relocation. “31 years on the job,” he says, “and I was never prouder than I am to be helping these people.”
Cork’s Simon Community says that in 2011, there were 34 people sleeping rough in Cork. Last year that figure was 284. As of the end of October, there are 311 people sleeping on the streets of Ireland’s second city.
Catastrophic as our spiralling homelessness crisis is – and it is – it’s just the tip of a social crisis we have barely begun to acknowledge.
Christmas 2015. Ireland of “the new poor”, where so many Irish people are doing their best but just can’t make ends meet.
We’re told Ireland is out of the recession but if we are, we got there over the backs of the poorest and the most vulnerable.
We have created a two-tier country where those most in need have been let slip through the cracks and those with the least have been forced closer and closer to the edge.
A century since the Rising and Irish society is being held together only by charity.
In Cork, a soup kitchen founded in Victorian times is feeding the working poor. That’s some centenary.
Cork Penny Dinners exists solely on public donations.
On Twitter, Sabrina Dent offers a lovely idea. If you live near Cork, please think about adding a few cheap household items to your trolley every week.
Things like tinned fruit, sugar, cooking oil, tin foil, refuse bags and such are always needed and if you only bought one or two a week, you’d have a box put together in no time. Caitriona and the lads would be delighted with you.
Right in the heart of the city, Cork Penny Dinners is a warm and decent place, full of warm and decent people.
If you ever need a bite to eat, or a place to catch your breath or – most importantly – if you ever need a reminder that there is still good in the world, please call in.
You’ll be more than welcome.
Donal O’Keeffe is a writer, artist and columnist for TheJournal.ie. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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It is a sad state of affairs that not only is the kitchen needed, but under Fine Gael and Labour many similar has had to open.
With 40 homes approximately being grabbed by the banks a day and a 100% increase in the last year alone of homelessness, there has been no economic good trickledown for them and others.
For all the pre-election PR rubbish from FG and Labour, more needed places like the kitchen expose the real reality existing in this country.
Banks are giving mortgages to people under 35 that are single and on modest enough income again. Basically in 5 years If they can’t pay they take the house and sell it for double and then go after the buyer for more . The banks want them to struggle so they can screw them. The banks are one vile collection of C’S .
Why are you using an article on charity for factually incorrect comments on banks? Banks do not deliberately try and create scenarios whereby they can repossess houses. If the value of the house doubles in the next 5 years, which seems unlikely to happen, the mortgage holder could sell the house to clear the debt.
Well said. It’s also important to understand how the commercial banks actually function and how they periodically inflate property bubbles through their ability to create money to meet loan requests.
Many people quite reasonably believe that the banks are loaning out the money that they hold on deposit (or fixed multiples thereof) when they issue loans but this is not a correct understanding of how banking works. In reality, a banking license is literally a license to create money.
Around 97% of the money in circulation in the world today is created electronically by the commercial banks when they issue loans. In issuing credit, banks simultaneously create a brand new deposit in the borrowers bank account. Quite simply, the loan itself creates new money. The banks bring this new money into existence by pressing a computer keyboard, nothing more. Money doesn’t grow on trees but if you hold a banking license it grows on your IBM. The money is extinguished (deleted) as the borrower pays back the loan and the outstanding principal amount falls. The bank of course gets to charge interest on the loan which it created with a casual wag of a finger. This interest which the borrower must also find is not extinguished but is held by the bank as retained profits.
For most people, the biggest purchase of their lives will be the family home and so the mortgage will be the largest debt they ever undertake. A bank can create a €200,000 mortgage in a couple of seconds with a few keystrokes. Over a term of 25 years at an interest rate of 4% to 5%, you will pay somewhere between €110k and €150k in interest payments to the bank on top of the principal repayment. This means that a person on an average annual wage of €25k net will work for 4 to 6 years and hand every single cent that they earn in that time to the bank to repay interest on the money which the bank created from nothing in a matter of seconds.
This is the enormous power that has been granted to the private banks which they have used to massively exploit the rest of us through the debt mechanism under the capitalist sytem. The banking function needs to be taken from the failed and grossly profiteering parasite banks and returned to the rightful ownership of the people.
Even some sections of mainstream media are finally beginning to draw attention to the great con that is commercial banking.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/18/truth-money-iou-bank-of-england-austerity
Well Enda are you reading this? I’m a little surprised nobody ever “comes up to you” and tells you how bad things are for them..
@ Jho Harris
Enda thinks we are all on a minimum of €35K a year.
Those fairy tales someone else is feeding him for a change, has him deluded.
Well said Wally.
I would add that the bankers are not alone in this scam. A huge part of what people pay for their homes – either thru’ rents or mortgages – is for something that has only a tiny fraction of intrinsic value compared to the price paid. That is the patch of earth the house stands on. Hundreds of thousands per acre for most dwellings. As Wally writes, bank interest and other skim offs add significantly to this.
And this price doesn’t stand still. By ensuring that housing never meets demand, the price continually rises, skimming off (near) every last cent of the productivity increases in the economy.
If we were not making this top few percent, the land owners and developers, ever obscenely richer, year by year, no one need be homeless, hungry or lacking excellent health services.
Never has this divide been more stark than in the unequal sharing of the burden of the Banks’ pyramid fraud bust since 2008.
The Austery policies have systematically picked off essential provision from the poorest and most vulnerable in society. And the mainstream political and media classes have cheerled it, as well the mainstream economists. They need to be kicked out of office.
Unfortunately this cabal of elites now also rule from Europe, holding us in the straightjacket of a shared currency system designed to perpetuate and extend such inequality.
As we saw in Greece, any government trying to stand alone for the interests of the ordinary citizens’ (majority) will be crushed. It will not be easy to establish meaningful democracy, in Ireland or in Europe generally, but if we don’t try, things will only get worse.
The fundamental divide of economic onterests in society is, as ever was, between the Capital owning few and the Labour class majority. The ‘taboo’ reality that none in (mainstream) politics, media or economics will ever talk about. We should all understand why.
By definition, in a democracy, the Capital owners have no right to be owning and controling government. Yet that is precisely the case (in near all countries). It’s long past time we changed that. That does not mean throwing out Capitalism in its entirety. Rather establishing proper democratic government as an equal counter balance to the inherent power of Capital owner interests. We can work together if we establish appropriate structures of governance.
I have no problem with entrepreneurs who use skill and hard work to facilitate productive enterprise, that benefits us all, from receiving high financial rewards. Talented people deserve the means to play on a bigger stage. But no one should ever get left behind, and all should have as equal an opportunity as possible to develop their talents.
And we should never forget that money is not the real goal, merely the means, properly distrubted, to enhance society as a whole and bring out the best that humanity can do – and wants to do, given the chance. We are an inherently co-operative species (excepting the 1 to 2% Psychopathic). We just need to learn how to do that at our present population scales.
Nope.
There’s a thing called loan/saving accounts ratio. At any time a bank should not have loaned money more than 100-110% of the total of saving accounts, current accounts etc, existing money that is.
Bnaks are not just creating money from nothing.
Saw it on bbc2 program last Sunday ,great bunch helpers/ volunteer especially the youngsters giving up their holidays . Well done to all who do this valuable service
Very good article Donal on a fantastic Organisation.
On reflection though – with the demands from the new poor etc , how can FG be polling at 30% ???
Are certain members of the Irish Public ( 30% of them ) so selfish and immune, to the level of the unequal Austerity imposed, that they can ‘forgive’ FG , while so rightly , punishing only , The Labour Party ???
The 30% still polling for FG? I’ll take a stab at explaining who they are…
The top 3rd of them know they are skimming off huge amounts of unearned income, running and profiting from their part in the ‘FIRE’ sector scams. (FIRE = Financial, Insurance and Real Estate (land & property) ) The bankers, the lawyers, property and land owners and developers, media owners and senior editors and execs, most of the economist ‘profession’, the large farm owners etc.
The other two thirds are the ‘wannabes’. The lower ranks of the upper classes that believe the status quo works fine for them – might just tip them into the big money one day even. They fear change, and tell themselves the poor are poor because they deserve to be. Spread and believe the mainstream media lies that props the whole system up.
Very well put MIke. That’s the real nub of it. As a child of the Thatcher years the wannabees were called the ‘upwardly’ mobile. Sadly it’s age and experience that puts paid to that religion (yes I was caught up in that aspiration myself as a young entrepreneur) Can’t see the current FG religious fervor of Free Market Economics delivering anything holistic, only widening the divide further still. Looking back the Quakers really didn’t have a bad business model, equity around, but given the autocratic times perhaps a bit right wing-ish.
The soup kitchen is 100 years old, yet it’s FG’s fault still. Stop politicising everything ciarroch, because no matter who is on power, there will be hungry and poor people, unfortunately.
Jason,
Stop trying to gloss over the fact that there is an increase in the numbers of dinners served and the number of homeless on the streets since FG took over.
Address the point ciarroch and stop attacking the person and putting private information about people on a publicity forum. Is this how SF operate? Attacking people who you disagree with? You and Jamming are terrorist apologists and cowards. And bullies. You raise points which have nothing to do with the article. Northern Ireland has poor people despite a SF government.
You mean 30% and rising…. Can’t wait for the GE either :)
And cork fg tds boasting about the jobs being created in Cork.shame on them ,even working families even rely on this.I wish you all the best in the future.
This is a fantastic organisation and this year have Sarah’s Gift of Hope Tree. So families that have can share with families that haven’t at Christmas.
All you need to do is donate a new outfit for any age group and drop it in in Penny Dinners Cork.
Cork man Michael martins legacy right there! That and being remembered for having that developers money lodged into he’s wife’s bank account!
This is an amazing service & the volunteers that run this are fantastic & so friendly. They put a call out on Twitter looking for new clothes so went through my wardrobe & found a few things to donate & i gave them a bag of shopping last week.. You never know when it could be you in need of their services …
Wonderful work by those volunteers ,how is it funded?
Says in the article, private donation only – no gov support (surprise, not).
A fantastic voluntary service and well done to all. Amazing people in our new and unpredictable reality.
Fg,lab,Recovery.
Sorry to see Francis Brennan reduced to such a lowly station.
He was an inspiration to the nation a few years ago, very positive attitude, sartorially elegant, hard working and fastidious,
Now look.
Hopefully he will get back on his feet soon and this depressing chapter in his existence will become just one more tale to regale and inspire the nation.
Best of luck Francis.
At least we can be assured the toilet roll placement will be correct.
Banks gave money to people who they targeted as having a reliable income (teachers nurses guards),This was done to make landlords of people ,and save the government having to deal with the social housing problem ,build or buy and maintain houses for the less well off .The banks were bailed out but the “landlords” we’re let swing !This caused the “landlords” to have to raise rents (to stand still) thus pushing the poorer “rent allowence” people off the ship ,and the “landlords”hanging on by their finger tips . The government according to OECD report are hoping this will “sort itself out” .
Houses are safe, tangible assets.
There is no reason whatever – aside from an ideology of private greed – that government could not borrow to finance full social housing provision on a cost neutral basis. To not do so is entirely a political choice.
Such participation in the market would also lower the prices for all of us toward true intrinsic (productive and essential ‘life’) value for the real resources required.
So again the nub of it is the political/corporate choice to keep inflating this bubble and keep the cabal happy – fek the rest ! And of course the media (Rte especially) will have nothing or little said during main stream viewing that contradicts current political policy. Certainly they appear to know what the craic is when making in the shadows programmes like Irish Pictorial Weekly.
http://m.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/gene-kerrigan/joans-scissors-make-cruellest-cut-of-all-31541910.html Remember joan opening a food bank
I’d like to see some other testimony to the ‘fact’ that poverty in Cork has increased by 1,800% in the past three years, or else this influx of Soup kitchen visits may have an element of greed rather than need? I’ve seen it happen in Dublin, during the boom, even.
From my own experience of charities, they tend to portray a picture of helping the homeless, which motivates the elderly to leave a sizeable portion of their will to them, such as the Simon Community, and on the other hand they bully people who volunteer to help out. If they are so rude to new staff behind the scenes, God only knows how they must treat the residents. Shameless money making racket this Simon Community is .
My apologies – I should have included a link to Cork Penny Dinners’ website in the column. http://www.corkpennydinners.ie/wp/ Please take a look and – if you can spare a few bob – think about making a small donation. Many thanks for reading.
From my own experience of charities, they tend to portray a picture of helping the homeless, which motivates the elderly to leave a sizeable portion of their will to them, such as the Simon Community, and on the other hand they bully people who volunteer to help out. If they are so rude to new staff behind the scenes, God only knows how they must treat the residents. Shameless money making racket this Simon Community is.
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