The Hunger

It seems begging on the streets of Dublin has reached chronic levels. Some are saying Dublin is going, or indeed has gone to Hell, but complaining that things aren’t the way they used to be anymore tends to be a staple of Irish people. A prominent Dublin charity spending €50,000 a month on food and the Capuchin Day Centre preparing 600meals a day, however, does confirm something of Dublin’s trouble. Walking idly around the city last week, it did seem quite prominent; at the ATM on Saint Stephen’s Green a sunburnt twenty-something lady in a sleeping bag, in the park with stories of needing a bus fare, on Baggot Street hassling smokers outside the pubs, one just beyond the canal at Milanos swimming in his own vomit, Saturday night on Harcourt Street and a flow of luckless men and women hoping to catch people coming out of the night-clubs, on any bridge over the Liffey, Wolfe Tone Park, under the Loop-line on Talbot Street, the list could be as long as Ulysses and the words to describe them might actually enable one to rebuild the city.

Why is the question, with recession the immediate answer. But the ‘why’ still lingers. Might it be said, harshly or otherwise, that being generous is akin to feeding a stray dog. Would they do it if they had no other choice? Would they do it because it had been too long since their last fix of heroin? Would they do it if it didn’t yield some return? Ours is not a country, of course, that turns its back on the hungry but if the problem is as serious as it clearly is, this country ought to be doing more – and that does not mean throwing coins into a styrofoam coffee cup.