A helping hand in hard times

EM speaks to Society of St. Vincent de Paul National Vice President, John Monaghan, about the challenges facing it in these changed economic circumstances.

The society of St. Vincent de Paul is the largest voluntary, charitable organisation in Ireland. It has a membership of 9,500 volunteers in 1,400 branches, or conferences, throughout the country working for social justice and the creation of a more just and caring society.

The organisation also gives practical support to those experiencing poverty and social exclusion, by providing a wide range of services to people in need.

This description of the St Vincent de Paul hardly does justice to an organisation which has been helping the needy and fighting social injustice in Ireland for the past 164 years and has become almost part of the fabric of our daily lives.However, the very familiarity the organisation has achieved may actually be helping to disguise the growth in its relevance of late.

“The number of calls for assistance to the Society are up 40% this year,” says National Vice President John Monaghan. “And about 25% of our calls are from people looking for assistance from us for the first time. These first time callers tend to be from families with children – it might be the case that the parents are working in low paid jobs or have recently become unemployed but they are all experiencing similar difficulties in making ends meet.”

The Society spent some €45 million helping people last year.“Top of the list for assistance was food and utility bills,” says Monaghan. “We spent €4.8 million on food and a further €3.5 million on various forms of home energy including solid fuel, oil, electricity and gas bills. Both ESB and Bord Gais are enormously helpful to us and work with us to help resolve issues for people and avoid disconnections.We are most grateful for that help.”

Another major area is education.“We spent €2.6 million last year on education costs”, he points out.“These include books and clothes for primary and post-primary school children and it can sometimes involve us in helping families send a child to third level education as the grant system can often be inadequate. In addition to that we spent €7.8 million on general bills, which can go all the way from buying clothes for a new baby to helping to bury a grandparent.”

Finally, some €2 million a month goes on basic necessities.

Another altogether more heart-warming statistic relates to the Society’s activities. “Our 9,500 volunteer members put in about 2.5 million volunteer hours every year and carry out 400,000 visits to clients,” Monaghan notes. “In a country where people say there is a decline in voluntarism this is very encouraging.”

He believes that the increase in the number of calls to the Society is due to a combination of factors including increased unemployment as a result of the downturn in the economy, rising prices for almost everything and the recent budget.“The effects of the budget are already being felt and they are going to be very significant in the future,” he says.

Acknowledging that Christmas is an especially hard time for people and families experiencing poverty he says that the Society is ready to help. “I would remind everyone who finds themselves in difficulties making ends meet this Christmas that we have a direct line to Santa.We get great support from people every Christmas in organisations like the ESB and we are able to help get childrens’ presents and food to families who need them.”

But he is concerned about the future. “This year people may be feeling the pinch and there is a real worry that they may stop giving to ourselves and other very worthy charities as a result”, says Monaghan. “If our income drops we will struggle. In the late 80s and early 90s most people were struggling so it was easier for them to empathise with those that were worse off. Today it is different and there is that attitude that there are no poor people. Well there are and they are everywhere. We now have the working poor as well – people in middle class areas who are falling on hard times and trying to disguise it; who can’t pay for all of the little things like school expenses and so on.”

The real test will come with the annual church gate collection which starts on December 1st. “We will start to know after Christmas how well this went,” he says.“We are hoping that people will continue to be as generous as they have been in the past but we are a little concerned that our income will go down. If it does we will have real problems next year given the scale of the increase in calls to assistance that we are experiencing. In the meantime, if anyone wants to contribute either financially or in terms of their time they should go to our website at www.svp.ie to get full details of the organisation, our wide range of activities and how to help.”