In the ongoing crisis, everything has to be measured through the viral lense of COVID-19 and charities are no exception. Thousands of older people across the country rely on the services of meals on wheels to provide them with lunches and dinners, but the current Coronavirus restrictions mean that their services are more important than ever.
Today with Seán O'Rourke reporter Evelyn O’Rourke went to Finglas in Dublin to visit the Support Meals on Wheels group, which looks after about 100 people.
The service provides a soup, a main course and a dessert for 5. Evelyn spoke to Bernie Donnelly, who operates the service:
"Our service usually operates 5 days a week, Monday to Friday, but now, to try and keep that little bit more distance from our clients, we’re going to operate Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with two dinners going out each day."
Bernie says the service is hearing from worried clients every day, asking if they’re going to get their meals and how long the service will be able to stay open. Although they get early-morning access to Tesco so they can buy essential supplies, the service finds itself between two stools, according to Bernie:
"It’s a Catch-22 situation. If we shop in the wholesalers and we fill our freezers, etc, up here, if it’s a thing we have to close, then we could be in a position where that food will spoil, or we can’t use it if it goes past a certain date. So, we’re really managing now, pretty much, it’s dodgy."
Clients of the Meals on Wheels service are varied, with some couples or parents and children, which Bernie tells Evelyn is a good thing in terms of company and conversation, but there are also a significant number of people on their own.
"I think it must be quite frightening for them to say that the one thing they have lost is the liberty to go where they want."
The upside of the current health situation though is that the organisation’s phones haven’t stopped ringing with people volunteering to help out, something Bernie is grateful for and something she thinks they’ll have to take people up on.
One major issue for Bernie is funding. As the Coronavirus crisis deepens, a lot of pensioners have been staying indoors, meaning they’re unable to collect their pensions.
"Lately we’ve been hearing, 'I haven’t been able to get my pension, I won’t be able to pay’… A lot of them are afraid to go out to collect their pensions, which is understandable if anyone passes by the post offices and looks at the queue at 9 o’clock in the morning – it’s chock-a-block."
While it may be understandable, it leaves the Support Meals on Wheels group with a real problem:
"We’re not going to say to somebody, ‘No you can’t have a dinner because you haven’t got your five euro, we can run out of money. And it’s very real for us because we work on a month to month basis."
Bernie estimates that the service can only continue to operate for another month without financial support. They’ve had no contact from the HSE to date.
Evelyn also hitched a lift from one of the drivers with the service and you can hear about that, as well as the rest of her report, here.
