Plans by Dublin City Council to restrict soup kitchens in the capital is “depressing”, when for many people it might the only way they can get a hot meal, Focus Ireland has said.
New bylaws due to be drafted, which could put an end to on-street soup kitchens and food banks over health and safety concerns, were defended by Dublin City Council at a meeting last night.
The council said it does not want to ban the services, but wants a new licensing system requiring “necessary standards” for operators.
Focus Ireland has called on the Government to think about the kind of society it wants to build.
Director of Advocacy for Focus Ireland Mike Allen said: “The society that we want to build in Focus Ireland does not include the necessity for people to stand in the dark, in the cold, to be handed out soup on the street.”
Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, he said it is a bad state of affairs that so many people are forced to get food that way and “we would support any sort of measures which will change the conditions, remove the circumstances where that happens.”
He said there is a narrative emerging that makes it sounds “like bands of people” using soup kitchens are homeless or in poverty and “sort of lowering the tone of the city”, but said, it “isn’t just a homeless issue. It’s a much wider issue of food poverty”.
Mr Allen said that about 40 years ago when Sr Stanilaus Kennedy opened a coffee shop where homeless people could come for food, it would not have crossed anyone’s mind that “we would put somebody in the undignified situation of having to eat their food on the street”.
He said it “shows how more miserable and how low our standards have become” that organisations feel that soup kitchens on the city’s streets is they only way they can offer food to people.
Mr Allen said much of the work of homeless charities is working with people to show them a pathway out of homelessness and that some of the soup kitchen volunteer organisations would not have the capacity to provide that kind of support.
“But the answer to that is working more closely with them, not banning them.”
Mr Allen said that homelessness needs to be a priority in the Programme for Government for the new government.
Speaking on behalf of the Irish Homeless Policy Group, he said neither Fianna Fáil nor Fine Gael had much about homelessness in their manifestos during the General Election campaign.
The Irish Homeless Policy Group is made up of organisations working at the frontline of the homelessness and the housing crisis.
Mr Allen said they have “really been struck by the complete absence of discussion of homelessness.
“I haven’t heard any reference by any of the political correspondents or any of the politicians talking about the programme who said anything about homelessness and what they’re going to do about it in the Programme for Government.”
He explained that 11 organisations have come together and will today make a statement to the people who are negotiating the programme that they need to be putting solutions to homelessness into the Program for Government.
“We’re not looking for a strategy to end homelessness in the programme, but we’re looking for some key targets and key goals, which will show that they believe the homelessness can be solved and that they want to work with us to do so.”
