Dramatic rise in calls to SVP in Cork down to rise in cost of living

The president of the Society of St Vincent de Paul’s (SVP) South-West region, Paddy O’Flynn, has said the number of calls received by its Cork city centre office had risen by 10%-15% over the final three months of last year — something he puts down to the rise in the cost of living.

Mr O’Flynn, said that the office had received more than 30,000 calls over the period — a figure he said is in no way reflective of the totality of the calls received in Cork.

Mr O’Flynn said that, taking into consideration repeat calls, that figure is “much larger”.

“The last three months of the year totalled for Cork city for direct calls to the office in Tuckey St would be an estimated 30,000,” he told The Echo. 

“But that in no way reflects the totality of the calls we receive and the repeat calls with people who we keep going back to again and again .

“In addition to that, you’ve got repeat calls to the local conferences [branches], and we have 35 conferences who look after home visitations in Cork city and a lot of them would be taking calls and repeat calls themselves, so it is a huge undertaking to manage in terms of logistics and then to respond.”

Requests

Mr O’Flynn estimates the number of requests for help received in the last quarter in the south west region are up by 10% - 15%, which he said is a result of families not being able to match their incomes to the cost of living. 

“Be it social welfare to people who are in full employment but in what we call precarious employment. So, it’s a reflection of the increased cost of living across food, energy, back to school costs, mortgages, rent, and it reflects on the difference between the ‘new’ cost of living, as I call it, over the last two years and the inability of incomes to keep pace,” he said.

He said that fundamental social welfare rates are far below what they were respectively back in 2020 and they haven’t moved with inflation.

Regret

“The biggest regret we have of all these numbers is that 36% of the requests we get are particularly for food and we help them with vouchers and with hampers. Over the month of December, we provided more than 2,500 hampers to the people of Cork and we usually deliver about 300 a week outside of that,” Mr O’Flynn said.

“Energy bills constitute between 17% and 20% of people failing to match their income with the sharp increase in energy costs.” 

Mr O’Flynn said that SVP South West Region (Cork and Kerry) estimates that about 15% of the people coming to them are new presentations.

“These people are in lower paid employment but just have failed to make ends meet. So these people find it very difficult to come to us but we welcome them. We don’t ask any questions. We are a confidential service and deal with people in a non-judgemental way.” 

Nationally, SVP received just over 250,000 calls for help to its regional offices and local conferences throughout the country during 2023, a 10% increase on the calls for help received in 2022.

The bulk of the calls, just over 90,000 (36%), requested help with food, 20,000 were related to energy and utility bills, while another 33,000 calls were from people struggling with both food and energy costs.

“If you look at the income required to give a minimum standard of living you would argue that there are about 800,000 people in the country who are just not at that level,” Mr O’Flynn said.