You may well have walked past it and not given the
single-storey squat building a moment’s thought. Its exterior is entirely
nondescript: the kind of white pebble-dashed building that is swallowed into
its grey surrounds.
But look closer and you’ll see a simple teak plaque
with Cork Penny Dinners engraved.
The name harks back to its 19th century origins for Cork Penny Dinners may have been set up as a soup kitchen by the Quakers during the Famine when the practice of paying one penny for soup and bread was born. Crossing the threshold, you are immediately struck by how old the interior is, how old, how small and how in need of renovation. A charity that hands out up to 1,400 hot meals per week is run from a kitchen and dining room that aren’t that much bigger than a large family kitchen and living room. Because it is so cramped, the place is heaving, not only heaving with people eating but groaning with boxes, crates and trays of tins, fruit, vegetables and dry perishables, all the ingredients that keep this seven-day-a-week free canteen in motion. There are deep freezers here and there, wall-hung cupboards that are crammed full and with 12-packs of toilet paper and bleach stacked precariously on top. At another corner of the linoleum-floored room stand trays of fizzy drinks, yoghurt drinks, crisps and boxes of tea. “Milk, tea and bread would be a big thing as they’ll be eaten all day,” says co-ordinator, Catriona Twomey. There are about six rows of tables in the dining room and about 30 customers, mostly men, sitting on benches redolent of church pews.
Before coming here, I’d thought that people would just file in, eat and file out. Not so. Many of the groups slurping tea and picking at Christmas cake sit there for hours, eating some, talking some or just staring ahead. The volunteers say many of the older homeless stumble into the warmth shell shocked after a particularly cold night. There is an undeniable edge to some of the diners, a simmering anger. There is also laughter, sadness, razor-sharp wit and a lot of mental health problems, you can see the cold, wet hopelessness of depression and anxiety hang over some. One table of older men just all there sit there heads lowered. John William Roche tells me he’s been living on the street most of his life. He stares at me with open anger. “I’ve been in and out of jail all that time too,” he thunders as he shoves his bandaged hand under my nose so I can practically smell his injuries. One of the volunteers trying to negotiate storage is Barbara. She has tears in her eyes and has to gather herself as I move over to talk to her. “He was so delighted to be asked to help,” she says. “I never thought to do it before,” she splutters. She’d asked one of the younger diners, in his late teens I guess, to help her pack away the recently arrived food. A young man with a possible learning disability, he is revelling in his leadership role. “I come here twice a week,” says Barbara “and I get more pleasure out of it than anything”. When I walk over to the kitchen offering to help, it’s buzzing,
The volunteers have been here since 6.30am peeling potatoes, carrots, parsnips and turnips for dinner. The first ‘knocks on the door’ will be people looking for a bowl of soup or mug of tea, so big stainless steel cauldrons of vegetable soup were made the evening previous and sit bubbling on the stove. Volunteer, Denis tells me those early callers will have been “out all night” and will be “cold to the bones”. Denis is in his 50s and volunteers five days a week. Since last May he’s one of the first into the kitchen every morning, leaving at 2pm. “It’s quiet today, normally much busier,” he quips as he quickly slices fat off roast pork belly and plates it up along with vegetables, mashed potato and gravy. Cork Penny Dinners has recorded a 55% rise in demand for its services this year. 2013 was its busiest ever. This time last year it was feeding about 900 people a week, a figure it described as “staggering” in comparison with the roughly 140 people that ate from the kitchen before the economic collapse.
This operation is so simple, transparent and caters to such a basic need, the feeding of those without food, that it appeals to many. In the aftermath of the Central Remedial Clinic scandal, many other charities are recording drops in donations of up to 20%, Cork Penny Dinners has not seen a similar falloff as it’s all voluntary with no obscene pension plans or salary top-ups. There’s also a tangible warmth among the volunteers. Orders are barked from the wooden hatch that links the dining room and kitchen — ‘one dinner’, ‘two dinners’ ‘one dinner no gravy’. “Its like a well-oiled clock ” Denis says. “And it’s only as good as it is thanks to Caitriona. ” Caitriona is from Blackpool, a mother of 8 whose father before her was a volunteer at Penny Dinners. I ask her can I do something to help and am quickly handed a tea towel. The cycle of dishwashing and drying is relentless here. On wash-up today is Ciara, a psychology student at the College of Commerce.
Niall, another volunteer and a business enterprise graduate, is “on the teas and coffees”. He’s standing close to the wooden hatch where orders are called in to the kitchen, filling mug after mug with tea and coffee from the hissing burka boiler. Niall would like to set up a charity for homeless children in time. “A couple of weeks ago, you’d see a good few children coming in. There’s less at the moment but maybe that’s because it’s mid-week. You will see that a lot of the takeout dinners go to families with children who don’t want to bring them in here,” he says. There’s a mixture of accents in the kitchen: from ‘pure Cork’ to under Bow Bells Cockney. Caitriona says volunteers come from Afghanistan, Denmark, China, the US and the UK to work here. There are nurses, social workers, truck drivers, teachers, builders and the unemployed. You get the sense though that employment status or profession is irrelevant.
Volunteer after volunteer tells me how overawed they are by the generosity of individuals and businesses. The vast majority of the donors don’t want their names publicised but I hear Tesco, Ramada, Dealz and breadstores in the Old English Market being mentioned. “Just the other day, Caitriona got a phonecall from a fisherman who said he had a little bit of fish for us. A few hours later he arrived with 80 kilos of hake and whiting,” said Niall. “Yeah, and by that evening, the fish were all filleted and prepped and all eaten by 2pm the next day,” says early-man Denis. Conditions are so primitive on this site that the volunteers can’t even depend on hot water. When it suddenly runs cold, they just have to start boiling kettles. When you’re feeding over 100 people a day, wash-up by kettle is a trial. The space doesn’t have central heating either or any insulation so keeping it warm and inviting is costly business.
Cork Penny Dinners is essentially a small hall spilt in two, the dining hall and kitchen. And the intermediary is Albert, the endlessly cheery man with the Dick Van Dyke smile who I sense may know more about what is going down in town than the gardaí. At another corner of the kitchen, a volunteer is trying to push dirty baking trays out of the way so he can find room to start packing plastic takeaway boxes full of dinner. There are as many penny dinners eaten out of these premises as are eaten in.
Outside I start chatting to one of the few women who’d sat there all morning. A petite blonde with a face of full makeup, she pulls deeply on a cigarette. In her forties, she tells me she’s back living with her mother as she couldn’t find anywhere to rent. “You should see all the problems in there, drink, addictions, beatings, cancer, so many sick people. Caitriona is a lovely women though. She never says no.” The blonde woman’s 20-year-old son stands beside her. He has ADD, learning difficulties, and can’t read or write. He’s bunked up with his friend now. The mother and son spent the greater part of last year living in a tent near Gaol Cross. Penny Dinners, the Yellow Bus at Popes Quay and Simon were their salvation. But despite the cramped conditions, there is no chance of Cork Penny Dinners moving to a new greenfield state-of-the-art site. “If we move from here, nobody will come in. The anonymity and location of this site is vital,” says Caitriona emphatically. I hate to say it to Caitriona but such a cramped space and such a throughput of needy clients must make health and safety regulations a nightmare. “As you can see, we’re constantly, constantly cleaning, constantly organising, constantly moving. We have to. Every night, every cupboard is cleaned and sprayed and we do regular deep cleans, but for health and safety reasons we have to keep our volunteer numbers down”.
The voluntary committee that runs the operation would love to extend the single storey building “by going upwards” and have fundraised 50% of what they will likely require. There’s a building next door for sale with a small pocket of land. The dream is to build upwards but Caitriona admits they’d love to get their hands on that nearby land. Year round Caitriona and the team are appealing for food donations, volunteers and money donations via their corkpennydinners.ie website. * Money can also be directed to the charity bank’s account at Ulster Bank, 88 Patrick St, sort code 98-54-80, account no. 10927581.
The name harks back to its 19th century origins for Cork Penny Dinners may have been set up as a soup kitchen by the Quakers during the Famine when the practice of paying one penny for soup and bread was born. Crossing the threshold, you are immediately struck by how old the interior is, how old, how small and how in need of renovation. A charity that hands out up to 1,400 hot meals per week is run from a kitchen and dining room that aren’t that much bigger than a large family kitchen and living room. Because it is so cramped, the place is heaving, not only heaving with people eating but groaning with boxes, crates and trays of tins, fruit, vegetables and dry perishables, all the ingredients that keep this seven-day-a-week free canteen in motion. There are deep freezers here and there, wall-hung cupboards that are crammed full and with 12-packs of toilet paper and bleach stacked precariously on top. At another corner of the linoleum-floored room stand trays of fizzy drinks, yoghurt drinks, crisps and boxes of tea. “Milk, tea and bread would be a big thing as they’ll be eaten all day,” says co-ordinator, Catriona Twomey. There are about six rows of tables in the dining room and about 30 customers, mostly men, sitting on benches redolent of church pews.
Before coming here, I’d thought that people would just file in, eat and file out. Not so. Many of the groups slurping tea and picking at Christmas cake sit there for hours, eating some, talking some or just staring ahead. The volunteers say many of the older homeless stumble into the warmth shell shocked after a particularly cold night. There is an undeniable edge to some of the diners, a simmering anger. There is also laughter, sadness, razor-sharp wit and a lot of mental health problems, you can see the cold, wet hopelessness of depression and anxiety hang over some. One table of older men just all there sit there heads lowered. John William Roche tells me he’s been living on the street most of his life. He stares at me with open anger. “I’ve been in and out of jail all that time too,” he thunders as he shoves his bandaged hand under my nose so I can practically smell his injuries. One of the volunteers trying to negotiate storage is Barbara. She has tears in her eyes and has to gather herself as I move over to talk to her. “He was so delighted to be asked to help,” she says. “I never thought to do it before,” she splutters. She’d asked one of the younger diners, in his late teens I guess, to help her pack away the recently arrived food. A young man with a possible learning disability, he is revelling in his leadership role. “I come here twice a week,” says Barbara “and I get more pleasure out of it than anything”. When I walk over to the kitchen offering to help, it’s buzzing,
The volunteers have been here since 6.30am peeling potatoes, carrots, parsnips and turnips for dinner. The first ‘knocks on the door’ will be people looking for a bowl of soup or mug of tea, so big stainless steel cauldrons of vegetable soup were made the evening previous and sit bubbling on the stove. Volunteer, Denis tells me those early callers will have been “out all night” and will be “cold to the bones”. Denis is in his 50s and volunteers five days a week. Since last May he’s one of the first into the kitchen every morning, leaving at 2pm. “It’s quiet today, normally much busier,” he quips as he quickly slices fat off roast pork belly and plates it up along with vegetables, mashed potato and gravy. Cork Penny Dinners has recorded a 55% rise in demand for its services this year. 2013 was its busiest ever. This time last year it was feeding about 900 people a week, a figure it described as “staggering” in comparison with the roughly 140 people that ate from the kitchen before the economic collapse.
This operation is so simple, transparent and caters to such a basic need, the feeding of those without food, that it appeals to many. In the aftermath of the Central Remedial Clinic scandal, many other charities are recording drops in donations of up to 20%, Cork Penny Dinners has not seen a similar falloff as it’s all voluntary with no obscene pension plans or salary top-ups. There’s also a tangible warmth among the volunteers. Orders are barked from the wooden hatch that links the dining room and kitchen — ‘one dinner’, ‘two dinners’ ‘one dinner no gravy’. “Its like a well-oiled clock ” Denis says. “And it’s only as good as it is thanks to Caitriona. ” Caitriona is from Blackpool, a mother of 8 whose father before her was a volunteer at Penny Dinners. I ask her can I do something to help and am quickly handed a tea towel. The cycle of dishwashing and drying is relentless here. On wash-up today is Ciara, a psychology student at the College of Commerce.
Niall, another volunteer and a business enterprise graduate, is “on the teas and coffees”. He’s standing close to the wooden hatch where orders are called in to the kitchen, filling mug after mug with tea and coffee from the hissing burka boiler. Niall would like to set up a charity for homeless children in time. “A couple of weeks ago, you’d see a good few children coming in. There’s less at the moment but maybe that’s because it’s mid-week. You will see that a lot of the takeout dinners go to families with children who don’t want to bring them in here,” he says. There’s a mixture of accents in the kitchen: from ‘pure Cork’ to under Bow Bells Cockney. Caitriona says volunteers come from Afghanistan, Denmark, China, the US and the UK to work here. There are nurses, social workers, truck drivers, teachers, builders and the unemployed. You get the sense though that employment status or profession is irrelevant.
Volunteer after volunteer tells me how overawed they are by the generosity of individuals and businesses. The vast majority of the donors don’t want their names publicised but I hear Tesco, Ramada, Dealz and breadstores in the Old English Market being mentioned. “Just the other day, Caitriona got a phonecall from a fisherman who said he had a little bit of fish for us. A few hours later he arrived with 80 kilos of hake and whiting,” said Niall. “Yeah, and by that evening, the fish were all filleted and prepped and all eaten by 2pm the next day,” says early-man Denis. Conditions are so primitive on this site that the volunteers can’t even depend on hot water. When it suddenly runs cold, they just have to start boiling kettles. When you’re feeding over 100 people a day, wash-up by kettle is a trial. The space doesn’t have central heating either or any insulation so keeping it warm and inviting is costly business.
Cork Penny Dinners is essentially a small hall spilt in two, the dining hall and kitchen. And the intermediary is Albert, the endlessly cheery man with the Dick Van Dyke smile who I sense may know more about what is going down in town than the gardaí. At another corner of the kitchen, a volunteer is trying to push dirty baking trays out of the way so he can find room to start packing plastic takeaway boxes full of dinner. There are as many penny dinners eaten out of these premises as are eaten in.
Outside I start chatting to one of the few women who’d sat there all morning. A petite blonde with a face of full makeup, she pulls deeply on a cigarette. In her forties, she tells me she’s back living with her mother as she couldn’t find anywhere to rent. “You should see all the problems in there, drink, addictions, beatings, cancer, so many sick people. Caitriona is a lovely women though. She never says no.” The blonde woman’s 20-year-old son stands beside her. He has ADD, learning difficulties, and can’t read or write. He’s bunked up with his friend now. The mother and son spent the greater part of last year living in a tent near Gaol Cross. Penny Dinners, the Yellow Bus at Popes Quay and Simon were their salvation. But despite the cramped conditions, there is no chance of Cork Penny Dinners moving to a new greenfield state-of-the-art site. “If we move from here, nobody will come in. The anonymity and location of this site is vital,” says Caitriona emphatically. I hate to say it to Caitriona but such a cramped space and such a throughput of needy clients must make health and safety regulations a nightmare. “As you can see, we’re constantly, constantly cleaning, constantly organising, constantly moving. We have to. Every night, every cupboard is cleaned and sprayed and we do regular deep cleans, but for health and safety reasons we have to keep our volunteer numbers down”.
The voluntary committee that runs the operation would love to extend the single storey building “by going upwards” and have fundraised 50% of what they will likely require. There’s a building next door for sale with a small pocket of land. The dream is to build upwards but Caitriona admits they’d love to get their hands on that nearby land. Year round Caitriona and the team are appealing for food donations, volunteers and money donations via their corkpennydinners.ie website. * Money can also be directed to the charity bank’s account at Ulster Bank, 88 Patrick St, sort code 98-54-80, account no. 10927581.
Claire O' Sullivan
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