The Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP) today forecast that 2009 would be the most difficult year it has faced for a generation as it announced record spending last year.
Unveiling its biggest-ever annual appeal in Dublin, president Mairéad Bushnell said the society was seeing “a growing sense of fear and hopelessness” amid the recession.
“We’ve never seen anything like the number of calls for help we’re getting now. We’ll have to spend over €50 million this year to help people in need,” Ms Bushnell said.
She said calls for assistance were up 37 per cent in Dublin, 36 per cent in Cork and 30 per cent in the mid-west region.
“In some areas, two in every three calls are coming from families with children, and more than one in four calls are from people who never had to use our services before."
The Society announced a record spending in 2007 of more than € 46.2 million, an increase of 9.2 per cent on 2006, with €890,000 spent every week that year.
It said costs related to food, energy and education were posing the biggest challenges to people. For 2007, food supplied by the society was worth over €5.3 million, up 11.3 per cent on the previous year; fuel costs paid were €3.4m; and education costs paid were €3.3 million (up 22.3 per cent).
The society said it was “deeply concerned” the recent Budget “clearly failed to protect the most vulnerable in our community and will actually undermine the modest quality of life they currently have”.
“Last year, I said that political courage and leadership was particularly needed at that time to remove the inequality and social barriers faced by far too many in this country” Ms Bushnell said.
“In the present turmoil, it is the duty of Government to protect the most vulnerable in our communities - and SVP is calling for decisive action to do that.”
The SVP Appeal Week runs from December 7th to 14th with countrywide collections on Sunday, December 14th.
