Cork community café broken into over the weekend

A community café in Mahon which is run by a local charity that supports children with autism and their families in Cork was broken into in the early hours of Monday morning.

The Rainbow Club’s Cottage Community Café is run by part-time staff and volunteers, and also offers work experience to the club’s teens and young adults as well as catering for vulnerable and elderly people in the area.

The café shared on social media that they would not be opening on Monday as result of the break in, which they said was “highly disheartening” and had left them “disgusted.” They wrote, “Sadly our cafe was broken into over the weekend. Thankfully none of our staff were present and damage was minimal, however the cost of closure and the repairs will have a massive impact on our business.

“This crime is highly disheartening to our team who work so hard to ensure our cafe is a safe and welcoming place for all. We are truly disgusted by this awful act.

“Thankfully our CCTV has caught the individual responsible and the footage has been passed to the Gardaí.” 

Karen O'Mahony, founder of the Rainbow Club, explained that the doors had been broken open and the till had been wrenched from its place and brought outside where it was broken into and the float stolen.

“We have very clear CCTV so hopefully that will come to something, but there was an initial knock on effect this morning for the staff - Monday would be a very busy day, it’s the start of the week so they prep food for the week, fill fridges, put away shopping etc.” 

They weren’t able to get into the café until afternoon as Gardai were on site, and could only start on the prep work and cleaning the place then, so the café could not open today, which meant customers such as parents waiting to collect their children from summer provision, groups who come in for breakfast after their yoga class, had to be turned away.

Ms O’Mahony explained, “The staff were really upset, the initial feeling of someone getting into our little hub which is such a safe and welcoming place is really hard to process.

“We were trying to process that, and then elderly people came to the doors, people that come in for daily social gathering and to have a chat with staff - we had to send them away, so we were really upset about that.” 

The Café has recently gone through a revamp, with Ms O’Mahony explaining that they invested a lot of money into it for the community, saying “it’s a DEIS area where a lot of people struggle on a daily basis.

“When somebody comes in and interferes with the café, it can be hard to accept – we try to hard to make it a positive place and this individual had no regard whatsoever for that.” They have lost out on the money that was taken, the takings for today and the damage to the doors and till, “so it’s been a difficult day for us, but everyone knows the Rainbow Club, we don’t allow things to stop us – this won’t stop us, we’ll be open again in the morning,” Ms O’Mahony said.