There was anger and distress among people queuing for Christmas food-parcel tickets at the Capuchin Day Centre in Dublin on Wednesday when stewards announced all 3,000 had been distributed, shortly after 9.30am.
About 30 minutes earlier the centre had also run out of its weekly food bags – two hours earlier than usual.
“I am distraught,” said one young woman blinking away tears. “There is nothing for my child. My child has special needs. I am on my own.”
She said she had to wait until her son went to school before she could get here. “He’s 11. This, it’s not fair. I was told the tickets would be given out between 7am and 11am and it’s not even 10am yet. There was tickets last year at this time.”
Asked what she’ll do now, she wiped away more tears. “I’ll have to ring my friend. I am on my own. What am I going to? I was relying on this,” she said.
“We have never run out this early,” said Alan Bailey, manager of the centre, just off Smithfield, a religious organisation which has been distributing food packages to the city’s citizens for about 30 years.
Each December the centre gives out tickets entitling bearers to a Christmas food hamper later in the month.
From 4am on Wednesday people began queuing at the Bow Street entrance for tickets for this year’s distribution on Friday, December 20th.
By 6am the queue extended around along Nicholas Avenue and on to Church Street. In the cold and dark there were elderly men and women, mothers holding the hands of children in school uniforms, people pushing prams and buggies, in wheelchairs, on crutches. Some brought Jack Russell terriers or bulldogs on leads, others were leaning on walking frames.
Doors opened at 7am and the queue moved briskly, overseen by several gardaí, as hundreds more kept arriving and joining at the back.
Dave (58) was there at 6am and for the first time. “I’ve been homeless about three months. I had a house. I was working in steel fabrication. But I got congestive heart disease. I can’t work and I lost my house.”
Asked what he makes of the size of the queue, he says: “It is what it is. People are struggling. They’re not here queuing in the dark for the fun of it.”
A woman in her 50s had come on the Luas from Tallaght, having got up at 4.15am. “I am shocked at the length of the queue. I come up for the food bag every week because there’s only €232 in the house which is my disability allowance. I have an adult child who is not well, has never worked and never claimed social welfare. We live on that, for the two of us since 2019.
“The food bag is a big help, I have to say. I shop for the best value. Every week I go to Lidl, Aldi, Dunnes. We have the best of food but there is no going out, there’s no new clothes, no going for coffee, no extras in our house.
“I do save from January to now to give my son a few hundred quid at Christmas. If he needs clothes or anything on Amazon, that is the only time during the year he does that. I don’t buy anything for myself.”
From 7.30am, from the same door as they were distributing Christmas tickets, staff begin also distributing food parcels packed by volunteers in distinctive blue plastic bags.
Through the year, every Wednesday volunteers pack 1,450 bags of basic foodstuffs – tea, sugar, milk, cooked meat, packet soup and tinned vegetables. While these are usually available until about 11am, this Wednesday they are gone by 9am.
Vincent Kelly (77) comes every week. “Ah it is a good help. I am mooching along okay but everything is gone up. Even Lidl and Aldi is dear enough.”
He was born in a mother-and-baby home in Dublin and was ‘boarded out’ to work on a farm in Co Galway when he was nine. “I came back to Dublin when I was 59.″ He had worked in construction. He traced his mother “a few years ago” but she had already died. “Life is hardish but I work it out. You can’t be moaning on,” he says. “I try to be cheerful.”
As food bags run out and it becomes clear tickets for hampers will too, people begin to jostle and push in the queue. “Folks get off the road please. Get on the path,” implore gardaí. “Stop pushing.”
A staff member calls to the remaining 40 or so in the queue: “This is the last of the tickets. They are all gone.” People swarm around staff and Mr Bailey and gardaí intervene.
People begin phoning others on their way, telling them not to come in. Some describe the situation as “disgraceful”. Others looked stunned, some are crying. Gardaí disperse them, advising they can return at 12.30 for lunch.
The centre serves about 1,000 meals a day, free of charge – up from about 700 a day five years ago. The centre costs €4.7 million a year to run, of which it receives €400,000 from the State.
Asked his reaction to running out of food and Christmas hamper tickets within hours, Mr Bailey shakes his head. “It speaks for itself,” he says.
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