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The St Vincent de Paul Society’s newest outlet in Rathcormac. Photo: Declan Howard

By Liam Roche

This Thursday will see the St Vincent de Paul Society's newest outlet open in Rathcormac village. The shop there will be open from 9am to 5pm each Thursday, Friday and Saturday and, as always, your support for it will be appreciated.

Coinciding with the collapse in our economy four years ago and the resulting job losses, the Cork regional board of the St Vincent de Paul Society decided to set up a special conference to manage their clothes collection business and to extend their shops network throughout the county.

The main purpose at the time was to provide a fund that would grant aid conferences that were experiencing shortages. The society is presently spending in excess of €8m per annum within the Cork region. By any standards, this is an enormous figure and were it not for the generosity of the public at large, many of those we help would be without food and fuel.

Looking at figures recently released by the Central Bank, one couldn’t but take cognisance of the fact that we now have 99,000 mortgages in arrears by more than ninety days. Mortgages do not come in small amounts. For many it is a debt of one, two or three hundred thousand euro or perhaps greater. Do we have a full appreciation of what these misfortunate people are going through? Letters to repossess, negative equity, surcharges, stress, anxiety, sacrifice, trying to maintain standards and keep this ongoing headache from their families.

What these people have bought into is really no different to what any of us did in the 60s and 70s with much smaller incomes. The real difference is, when we built/purchased or homes, we were pretty sure of that five or ten percent increase in our income each year. This has totally changed, not only have we had an income freeze for the past five years but we have had the introduction of the Universal Social Charge, negative tax adjustments, fuel price increases and many others.

The Society of St Vincent de Paul cannot handle problems of this magnitude, but we can help lighten the burden by knocking a slice off the ESB bill, thereby preventing disconnection; by providing a food voucher or the occasional few bags of coal. We also help through the medium of our shops. A reasonably good pair of shoes can be purchased in our shops for less than eight euro. This is a very valuable contribution to the budget of some families, not to mention the value to be got in clothes and furniture also.

We are ever so grateful to those who have provided our Society with cash donations down through the years and continue to do so. To them I say: “Our portion to others will be God’s portion to us”. We are equally indebted to those who donate clothes, shoes, furniture, bric-a-brac and books to stock our shops.

At a time when there is so much media coverage of how charitable donations have been used, our Society is proud to be in a position to assure our supporters that every cent donated, or generated from your clothes donations, goes directly into our funds for distribution within the Cork region. Our sincere thanks for your continued support.

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