Families forced to feed kids at soup kitchens

A growing network of soup kitchens across the country is serving 2,445 free meals a week as the country’s mortgage arrears crisis deepens and parents struggle with back-to-school costs.

Yesterday, the founder of Twist Soup Kitchens, Oliver Williams, confirmed workers were seeing “a marked increase in demand” for food at his soup kitchens due to pressures on families, particularly single parents, struggling to pay for schoolbooks and uniforms.

Mr Williams confirmed he intends to open up the seventh Twist soup kitchen in Ennis on Sept 2, with plans for a further three in the pipeline.

He said the Clare soup kitchen is being opened in response to contact made by locals — just four months after the body of a homeless Czech national was found in a laneway in Ennis.

Josef Pavelka’s plight received national attention when a judge described his living in a public toilet as a scandal.

Mr Williams said if a Twist soup kitchen was in place when Mr Pavelka was alive, “it would have certainly helped” his situation.

Mr Williams’s comments come as the Citizens’ Information Bureau claimed that social welfare processing delays continue to cause hardship and distress. There were problems with rent supplement processing systems, in particular, which were “associated in some cases with potential homelessness”.

Mr Williams described the profile of those using soup kitchens as alarming: “We have people from across society. There is a new poor that cannot afford to pay mortgages with children going to school hungry — that is a fact.”

The opening of the Twist soup kitchen in Ennis comes 14 months after the first opening in Galway.

Since then, five others have opened — at Loughrea, Athlone, Sligo, Roscommon, and Tuam.

Mr Williams said he plans to open more at Drogheda, Kildare, and Mullingar before the end of the year.

The building in Ennis is being provided by a local church group, the Hope Assembly.

The food is provided free of charge and Mr Williams revealed that the Limerick-based company Pallas Foods makes several deliveries every week.

“We don’t know what we will receive with each delivery, and yesterday we received from Pallas Food 300 chickens, 100 partridges, and 48 buckets of fresh salad,” he said.

Mr Williams said that O’Hara’s Bakery of Foxford provides 10 loaves of bread each day.

“All of this food is free and without their help, we wouldn’t be able to continue.”

Mr Williams said Twist soup kitchens require 5kg of minced meat each day to provide their beef stews.

He said: “We are subject to HSE regulations and must prepare food and have hygiene standards on a level with any five-star hotel kitchen.”

Truck magnate Pino Harris has given the charity a Hino-refrigerated lorry free of charge.

Mr Williams had a bird’s eye view of the Celtic Tiger with his helicopter business flying developers and auctioneers around Ireland.

That business collapsed and Mr Williams — who celebrated his 47th birthday yesterday — said: “A measure of any nation is how it treats its weakest members and I believe that the weakest members of our society have been forgotten.”

Mr Williams said he endured a short bout of homelessness when he was aged 15 in London and availed of a soup kitchen during that time.