‘Families are being forced to choose between mortgage and food’

One day, a young boy asked his dad for a glass of milk.

The dad opened the fridge to find the milk carton empty. He didn’t have any change to run down to the shop with and neither did anybody else in the house.

For months, the family had been prioritising the family’s mortgage over grocery shopping and had been attempting to survive on a minimal amount of food.

The man’s son starting crying.

“It was at that point this man, now a client of ours, decided that he wasn’t paying his mortgage that month. The decision was made in a split second. They are the real-life decisions that are being made by people nowadays. These are the people that the likes of AIB like to refer to as strategic defaulters, people that AIB seem to think have a choice,” said Ger Spillane, Focus Ireland Manager in Cork.

Focus Ireland opened new offices at South Mall in Cork yesterday to meet growing demand for their services in Cork City and county and in Co Kerry. It also expanded its staff in Cork from three to 12.

Its advice and information service is now also run on a full-time basis as enquiries have doubled from 20 to 40 each month in the first six months of the year.

Many of those seeking help aren’t typically on the verge of homelessness. They are people with mortgages and many of them are working.

“There are very many frightened people out there. We often see people who lost their jobs and have mortgages but we also see people with jobs, often clerical jobs, who now can’t meet their bills.

“They have mortgages and personal debt such as credit cards. Often they will try and pay for the credit card as they fear the credit card companies will send people after them, often they are so stressed that they believe it’s better to keep the roof over their kids’ heads than eat properly,” he said.

“Many of these people have a pride, they’re used to paying their debts, they come from families who have always paid their debts, they have never been here before and have a huge fear of going to court, of ‘criminalising’ themselves as they see it,” he said.

Mr Spillane says many children in these home are suffering hugely.

“We hear of children being ostracised as their parents can’t afford to hold birthday parties anymore. And so the children aren’t being invited to any of the parties in the class. We also know of many husbands and wives that do not talk to each other at all or who fight constantly in front of the children because of the huge stress they are under,” he said.

Focus Ireland has been working in Cork since 2008, providing a number of homes for people who were homeless or at risk. The charity supported over 8,000 people in Ireland last year which was a 23% rise from the 6,500 people it worked with in 2010.

* Contact Focus Ireland Cork on 021 427 3646.