I am standing in a warehouse in Cork’s north city, surrounded by pallets of non-perishable food. This warehouse is operated by the Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP), serving people in the city and county. There are stacks of boxes of breakfast cereals; tins of corn, tuna, tomatoes; jars of jam and pasta sauce; packets of dried soup, pasta, rice, and the other basic foodstuffs that compose the food boxes that go out to 200 families every week.
This Christmas, 2,500 food boxes will be distributed to existing customers, and those who need additional help at this time of year.
“They’re called ‘food hampers’, but I think the term is perceived as a luxury or extravagance to the general public, whereas we are providing the bare necessities,” says Kate Durrant, who heads up the food distribution division of SVP in Cork. “If we could find a word that made sense to recipient and donor, that would be better.” She would prefer the simple term “food boxes” instead.
As for what will be in those 2,500 Christmas food boxes, the intention is that families will receive enough food to sustain them comfortably over the three key days of festivities.
RM Block
These are the contents of the Christmas food boxes: One large chicken, ham fillet, pack of pork chops. Two boxes of cereal, porridge. Canned beans, peas, sweetcorn, tomatoes. Pasta and pasta sauce, pot noodles. Canned salmon and tuna. Rice and pre-cooked rice. Gravy granules. Soup and quick soups. Creamed rice, custard, jelly. Marmalade and jam. Coffee, tea, sugar, biscuits. A large box of sweets, large box of biscuits, chocolate, cakes and mince pies, crisps. Potatoes, carrots and eggs.
“It’s a chicken in the box, not a turkey,” Durrant points out. “Anything else extra we are able to put in comes from donations from the public. Selection boxes. Cakes. We say chocolate is part of the food group. Why shouldn’t everyone have some nice things at Christmas? This is not meant to be charity, this is meant to be that people can close the door for three days and have enough food to get through Christmas, based on the number of people in the house. It’s public donations that can add some luxuries to the boxes.”
I ask whether mobile phones have made it easier for customers to seek help these days. “It’s not about the method of contact, it’s the stigma,” she explains. “We all want to be a donor or a volunteer; none of us want to be a recipient of Vincent de Paul. Many of the people we serve come from generations of poverty.”
Food poverty is more of a social problem in Ireland now than ever, as the cost of living is still rising. “The bulk of the people we support are 100 per cent dependent on social welfare, so your weekly income is defined,” Durrant says. “You have to find money for heat, for the meter for electricity. The one thing you can cut is the volume of the food and quality of the food you eat. That’s where we can help.”
The food SVP distribute is sourced through a combination of support from the European Social Fund Plus, and Food Cloud. Getting the food from the pallets into the cardboard boxes requires a consistent number of volunteers. John Connolly comes on board in November to organise the many additional teams of volunteers who work two hours at a time to pack the 2,500 Christmas food boxes. I can see several pallets with boxes marked “Xmas”.
Today, I am going out on a distribution run with driver John McGregor, who has been working with SVP for 12 years. Depending on need, and family size, people receive boxes weekly, fortnightly, or monthly. The generic white van is unmarked, so as to blend in with all the other white vans on the road.
Along with the boxes in the back of the van, there are also cool boxes that contain that week’s donations of fresh protein. Today, it’s portions of chicken piri piri and chicken Kiev. On arrival at the address, these will be added to the basic foodstuffs. Vegetarians and those with special diets are also catered for. There are notes on what kitchen equipment the homes have - is there, for instance, only a microwave and no oven? - so that foods needing ovens to be cooked can be swapped out for something else.
“Everyone gets a text the day before, to say when to expect the call,” McGregor says. As we drive, he says: “We used to go into the house before Covid and help unpack the boxes. That doesn’t happen now.”
Since confidentiality is crucial to the work SVP carry out, I do not get out of the van, nor interact with any customers on the run. I don’t even see anyone at their door, as McGregor parks a little away from the drop-off address each time. Instead, he tells me some of the recipients’ stories, representative of so many other families he makes deliveries to.
One recipient does not let McGregor in. He is instructed to leave the box at the door. “That person suffers from mental health issues,” he says.
McGregor tells me of a house worth a million euro he had made deliveries to in the past. There were two incomes in the home, but both jobs were lost in the recession. “They did everything to keep the mortgage going. They were selling all the contents of the house. I could see it all disappearing from week to week. Eventually, they lost the house.”
We pull in on another street. The resident does not answer the door, or the phone number he calls. “She might still be asleep,” McGregor says. Children live in the house. Sometimes they are in school when he calls, and sometimes not. He will try to make the delivery later.
At the next stop, there is no answer at the door. “He might be gone to the pub already,” McGregor says. It’s 10.40am. He calls the man’s number, “Are you home, boy?” he asks cheerily. “I’m in town at the moment,” is the reply. “I’m going to Ballincollig to get my hair cut.” There is an arrangement to make a later delivery. McGregor ends the call. We can both see barber shops in the immediate vicinity of the customer’s home. “You don’t go all the way to Ballincollig from here to get your hair cut,” he says.
There are so many stories of socio-economic struggles as we drive to the various locations. At one house, McGregor comes back with the information that while one room was “spotless”, the entire rest of the house is almost invisible under an avalanche of hoarded objects, with one bar of a gas heater going in the clean room.
At another location, where there is a woman living alone in her 80s, who lives up three flights of stairs in a house divided into apartments, McGregor carries the box upstairs. At yet another, he does the same for a man in his 40s living alone who had two strokes last year.
Elsewhere, McGregor drops a box at the door. The woman inside doesn’t want to let him in. All the curtains and blinds are closed. He tells me there are children living here. Back in the van, he waves at the air around his face and asks me whether I can smell anything off him, even though he never actually entered. “Weed,” he says. “I could smell it a mile off.”
As we drive, he recounts some of the stories people tell him. “The gambling has gone online. You don’t have to go out any more. You can bet from your bed, or play bingo. The men tend to spend on the horses, and the women on bingo. They talk about ‘chasing the win’, but they are really chasing the loss. They do it from bed, so even the social element of betting or bingo is gone now.”
Towards the end of our run, though it’s past noon on a weekday. McGregor says most recipients are still in sleepwear. “It’s normal . . . If you’ve nothing to get up for, why would you bother getting dressed?”
Donations can be made to SVP.ie
