‘It’s all going to come tumbling down’ - charity

APPEAL SVDP seek donations to help ‘new poor’

The re-emergence of a “new poor”, the likes not experienced since the worst days of the economic crash, is putting a huge strain on the resources of one local charity.

Many seeking assistance would have themselves donated to St Vincent De Paul in Cavan in the past, and now appear “embarrassed” when looking for help.

This is “only the tip of the iceberg,” predicts Siobhan Cosgrove, president of the St Patrick’s Conference of St Vincent de Paul in Cavan, who says they’re already preparing for matters to become steadily worse for families come New Year as post Christmas bills pile up.

The hardship facing some local families has been exacerbated by the disbanding earlier this year of Cavan Lions Club, an organisation that delivered several hundred food hampers as part of its annual Christmas Food Appeal.

At the height of its demand, the benevolent society delivered upwards of 300 food parcels working in conjunction with charities like St Vincent de Paul to ensure support got to where it was needed most.

“Since they stopped we’re getting a lot of requests from families for food,” explains Siobhan who co-chairs the local conference together with Linda Byrne. “We’re getting a lot of people asking for help as well with the cost of fuel. It’s right across the board. It’s not that there has been a massive jump, but we’re getting a lot of new people who we perhaps wouldn’t have had come to us before.”

The St Patrick’s Conference, which works with people in Cavan experiencing poverty and disadvantage, meets on Wednesday evenings where to consider requests for support received over the previous seven days.

Some are written letters left to the Cathedral of Ss Patrick and Saint Felim and passed on. Others are referrals from various organisations and agencies. Most relate to hard-pressed families living on or close to the breadline.

More than ever, Siobhan agrees, families in the middle income range are finding themselves pulled closer to the poverty line. With the current cost of living crisis, some are even cutting back on how much they spend on food, or eating less so they can pay for things like heating as the effects of the current cold snap are felt beyond the immediate chill outside.

“Absolutely,” says Siobhan. “We would have always kept our conference reach to Cavan Town, but now we find ourselves going out to the likes of Killeshandra, Mullahoran, areas we would never have helped families in before.”

Such demand is having an immediate knock-on effect to the conference’s resources, coupled with their inability to raise funds during Covid. All factors, says Siobhan, have created a “perfect storm”.

“We’d have done a street collection, a gate collection which was a big help, and a Christmas collection. But because of the pandemic we weren’t able to do any of that for the last couple of years, and so we’re really relying on what resources we have and they’re getting smaller and smaller.”

Siobhan reminds that every cent donated to St Vincent de Paul in Cavan or spent at their shop at Bridge Street “goes back into the local community”.

The loss of the Lions Club was “massive”, says Siobhan, and the St Patrick’s Conference now has to consider ways of best filling that void going forward.

“They were a massive help to people. And now it’s gone.”

Siobhan meanwhile praised all energy providers bar one - Energia - for offering assistance by way of vouchers, and similarly commended the Government’s €600 Budget 2023 credit initiative to help reduce electricity bills between November 2022 and March 2023.

The worry, however, is even it might not be enough to save some from worsening debt.

“Come January we are going to be overloaded with people looking for help. They’ve been given help up to Christmas but there’s not a lot of help coming after that. Then there’s the expense of Christmas, and the bills are going to come in in January. It’s all going to come tumbling down.”

Siobhan tells the Celt “an awful lot of people coming to us are initially embarrassed because they’ve never been in this situation before, and they don’t want to ask. Often they are people who had contributed to Vincent de Paul before or thought it was never for them. Then, when you sit down with them, and they show you their bills, you just do what you can for them.”

Every case is assessed on its own individual merits, and anonymity is maintained.

Siobhan concludes by reiterating the conference’s need for donations, and thanked locals for their generous support to date.

“Businesses have been extremely generous, and households have been very generous too. But they’re often not in and so we’ve left a letter with our bank details and our contact so we can call back if they want to leave some money in an envelope. We’d encourage that between now and Christmas, because we’re going to need everything we can get come January.”