For almost 170 years Penny Dinners has been offering food and comfort to hard-up citizens in Cork – but recently it has seen its client profile change

The best dressed avoid eye contact, looking at the floor or quickly joining the queue for their meals

IT IS 11.15am on a Saturday and I’m standing in a modern soup kitchen in Cork. Up to 10 volunteers stir large pots of vegetables or run forks across the top of large pies that are then loaded into ovens. Others cut bread and put it in baskets on long benches in a communal dining area. The kitchen is full of steam, large bowls of fruit cocktail and cups of tea.

Five minutes before the doors open, at 11.30am, and nobody is outside. The organisers of Cork’s Penny Dinners, who have been feeding the poor and needy in the city since Famine times, had told me their service had seen a threefold increase in demand in the past year. I begin to wonder if it wasn’t just PR spin.

“Don’t worry,” says Florence Harrison, one of the volunteers. “They’ll come.” And then, like extras in a horror movie, people begin to appear from laneways, some on crutches, others carrying ragged shopping bags or in small groups with caps pulled low over their eyes, making their way towards the entrance. I recognise several of the faces: some from their cardboard seats on bridges around the city, others from street corners.

The best dressed avoid eye contact, looking at the floor or quickly joining the queue to be handed their meals. They don’t queue outside because of the shame, preferring instead to wait out of sight until the doors open.

The idea of Penny Dinners is that everyone pays something, be it 10c or €1 – whatever change they have – in return for a meal. Seven days a week, food is given out from 11.30am until 12.30pm, and the Quaker community still runs the service as it has done for close to 170 years. They rely mainly on donations and the goodwill of suppliers and locals. Last week a pharmaceutical company, Novartis, had 30 workers paint the interior.

The location has changed over the years, and now the kitchen and dining area are in a former whiskey warehouse on Little Hanover Street, just north of the River Lee. The toilet is outside, and the building has scant heating and water and electricity issues. But it makes up for its structural deficiencies with its warm and friendly atmosphere.

“Need isn’t always that you don’t have money or food,” says Harrison. “Need is sometimes that you don’t have friends or you are isolated or have mental health issues.”

Some of the people in the queue for meals are, understandably, reluctant to talk; those who do talk ask me not to use their real names.

“John” says that before he started to use the service he rarely left his house. “I am a guy who keeps to myself mostly, and I never really go out anywhere. I don’t mix much with anybody unless someone talks to me. I like my own company.” John has been coming into the centre for about two months. Once he finishes his meal he’s out the door without stopping to talk to others, some of whom are still arriving. On his way out one of the volunteers gives him a sandwich, which he puts into his rucksack. “They’re very kind and good-hearted here,” he says. “The food is very good, and there’s always a welcome. I started going here to make ends meet. I live nearby. Times are hard, and it helps me along.”

Another of the visitors is “Paddy”, who is sitting on a bench with three other men, having a bowl of soup. He tells me that he has noticed lots of people using the service recently. “There’s more coming now in the last six months. I really see it. There’s a good few new faces after coming in. I heard about the place from a friend. It’s only €1. If you were to go out to the shop you’d be spending €20 a day on food, and I don’t have it.”

Making cups of tea in the kitchen is the oldest volunteer, 80-year-old Paddy Bruton, who got involved with the service when he himself was in need. “I’m involved here over 45 years and live around the corner,” he says. “I came in here like the rest of people to have my dinner. People behind the counter then wanted me to give them a hand, and I’m here ever since. There are a lot of people coming in now, more so than the olden days. Back then you’d only get soup, and now it is a four-course dinner.”

Working alongside Bruton is one of the newest recruits, a 20-year-old psychology student named Hazel Potterton, who was drawn into the centre out of curiosity rather than social concern. “I live next door and kept walking by and wondering what was going on inside. I googled it and then decided to volunteer last October. I was nervous meeting the people at the start, but once you sit down and talk to them you realise how they can easily fall into bad situations through no fault of their own. There are people I’m talking to here and they are saying they were just like I am. It is terrifying.”

One man in his late 30s or early 40s is clean shaven and wears Converse runners and a Levi’s jacket. “Paul” tells me he came in contact with the service when he was between social-welfare payments about two years ago. “I came here first out of need. I was not down and out, but I was in the shits and too old to be ringing the family,” he says. “Luckily, I asked a guy on the side of the street. I gave him a cigarette and said, Where can I go to get something to eat? He told me to come here. There were other places, but with my south Co Dublin accent I didn’t feel comfortable going there.”

Paul tells me he has battled addiction in the past, and he says many people who come to Penny Dinners have also struggled with drink or drugs. It would be hard to pick him out as someone who was in financial need, given his appearance. “I look grand and everything, but I don’t have a penny in my pocket and I’m bloody hungry today,” he says, “I had to come in. It’s not due to drink or drugs any more; it is bad money management and bills. This week I was left with €30 on Wednesday after bills, so that isn’t going to last until next Wednesday. I do volunteer work where I can, but, like the rest of the people, I rely on the meals. There’s no point me trying to say otherwise.”

In the coming weeks Harrison and some of her fellow volunteers, who last month received a Lord Mayor’s Community Award in recognition of their work, hope to meet city officials to secure funding to improve the building. Harrison says the premises cannot cope with the current demand for Penny Dinners’ services. Given the volume of empty retail and commercial space in the city, and the increasing hardship many locals are facing, she hopes for a sympathetic hearing.

With or without a new premises, the service will continue as it has done for the past century and a half. For Penny Dinners the emphasis is as much on promoting social inclusion as it is on giving out bowls of soup. “I feel very strongly that the people who come in here have to feel they have somewhere safe to come once a day where they are wanted,” says Harrison. “There was a woman last week who was beautifully dressed. She was very embarrassed, as she hadn’t any money, not even a few cents. We served her with a smile. You never know who hits rough times.”

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