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LAST UPDATE | 6 Oct 2021
THE UCC STUDENTS’ Union (UCCSU) has run out of food at its food bank just 50 minutes after reopening it.
The need for the food bank comes as students contacted the Students’ Union reporting that they were struggling to afford food after paying rent.
In a tweet, UCCSU said they were “disheartened” to announce the reopening of the food bank but it was needed “due to increased cost of living, and cost of being in higher education as well as many other issues that strain students financially”.
In a tweet tonight, UCCSU President Asha Woodhouse said they had run out of food just 50 minutes after reopening the bank and “have had to turn students away”.
“Heartbreaking to not have enough and to see so many students experiencing food insecurity,” Woodhouse said.
50 minutes in we’ve run out of food and have had to turn students away. Heartbreaking to not have enough and to see so many students experiencing food insecurity. Is this the @UCC and country we are supposed to be proud of? @SimonHarrisTD https://t.co/dpGdOrZCnm
— Asha Woodhouse (@UCCSUPresident) October 6, 2021
Earlier today, UCCSU Welfare Officer Caoimhe Walsh told The Journal that since taking up her position in June numerous students had rung her with concerns about being able to afford food.
“We’re getting a lot of students who were ringing me and telling me that once they paid off their rent, they had no money left for food.”
There had already been reports that students were seeking help with accessing food this year. “We saw an article online about how students had been going to Cork Penny dinners for food,” Walsh said.
UCCSU first launched the food bank for students back in 2019 in order to provide for students who couldn’t afford the bare necessities and are dealing with food insecurity.
Speaking about the food banks reopening today Walsh said, “it was really sad that we have to do it again… We were hoping that things weren’t as bad.”
The UCC website says that the average cost of living per month in Cork is between €1,240 and €1,880.
Average monthly expenses for students food are estimated to be between €250 to €350.
It also says that students can expect to pay a minimum of €500 per month for private rented accommodation before bills. On-campus accommodation at UCC is estimated to cost €600 to €680 per month.
UCCSU’s announcement of the reopening of the food bank on Monday came as the government launched the National Development Plan.
Two weeks ago, UCCSU, alongside the Union of Students Ireland (USI) slept out at the Dáil in protest of the student accommodation crisis.
Speaking about the student accommodation crisis Walsh said, “it’s getting harder and harder for students to afford [accommodation], which is just absolutely ridiculous. Something needs to be done.”
With reporting by Hayley Halpin
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Not enough socialism, apparently.
@P.J. Nolan: essential ingredients of successful durable socialism is a brutally heavy handed military government, fake elections and an elite oligarchy. It never works without those pillars.
@alphanautica: you mean like norway, sweden or finland? Awful kips huh? Thank god we live here.
@Fake Avast: Yeah it was the USA that made Venezuela into an ungovernable socialist hellhole and not the policies of Hugo Chavez as he rots in the ground
Venezuela is AAA-PBP-SF’s role model economy.
This article is clearly as cheap shot at undermining their economic expertise.
@alphanautica: #pearseknowsbest
@Honeybadger197: Corbyn should head over on a mission. Give him a good PA system on the main square, they’d all settle down quite quickly once the hear what he has to say.
@alphanautica: There is virtually no policy in Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto that isn’t already followed in the Nordic states. Try playing another record, the Venezuela analogies are looking every bit as threadbare as Lynton Crosby’s IRA smear campaign.
@Harry Whitehead: you might want to get on to Corbyn so: ‘Chavez showed us that there is a different and a better way of doing things’ are his own words coming out of his own megaphone.
All those Corbyn cultists from earlier on should take note that this is his vision of a country that “got socialism right”.
How did we accept austerity so easily? Was it because it mainly dehumanised the poorest & sickest citizens especially Labour and FGs extremely regressive 5 budgets from hell.
Labour you are Still 4-6% in the polls cos u lied to the most vulnerable and caused homelessness ti become the norm for the badly off and people are years now waiting in agony on hospital waiting lists.
No matter what happened in Venezuela it wasn’t these young people’s fault more the fault of older people. If it was my child I’d want them where they were safe which is here.
The Journal goes straight for the click-bait kill as usual. A man wasn’t set alight, he was beating an abandoned state-owned motorbike with a stick, the petrol tank exploded and his clothes caught fire. It was a horrific event, but please don’t resort to lazy journalism for the sake of dramatic headlines
…oh, the unending joys of socialism!
Hopefully Venezuela has an Enda Kenny rising up through the political ranks who can rescue their country from the brink.
As happened in Ireland, we barely escaped the deathly clutches of the hard left, those naive self-convinced loons beset on suffocating economic improvement through hard work and instead wanting to suck an economy dry with their inert socialist begging bowl.
Perhaps there will be Enda Kenny tshirts circulating soon in Venezuela, modelled on Che Guevara, another proud Irishman of principle.
He’s not asking anyone to pay his tuition, the chap was robbed by his government like all the other students who have been robbed of life savings who came here to study. He is highlighting a situation that a lot of Venezuela’s who are here are in. Venezuela is in a dire place and the people are being killed in the streets everyday. They are being starved and robbed. How you can make light of that is beyond me.
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