Let’s talk about…
Dublin’s on-street “soup-kitchen” ban bylaws
Coming out of the festive season, a time heavily associated with giving charitably to others and the communal sharing of food, one does not expect to read headlines like those that began doing the rounds just before New Years; headlines sharing the news that Dublin City Council are gearing up to draft bylaws that would prohibit on-street food services for the city’s homeless population and others in need.
The introduction of these “soup kitchen” bylaws was a recommendation of the Taoiseach’s Taskforce for Dublin, published last October. They aim to end the practice whereby charitable volunteer groups set up unregulated services, usually providing hot food, to people queuing on the city’s streets, with the taskforce commenting that the delivery of such services in “high-profile locations risks the privacy, dignity and the safety of people using the service, attracts anti-social behaviour and drug dealing, and degrades the public realm”.
The news of these bylaws has, in recent weeks, drawn a slew of understandable criticism from members of the general public and the charitable groups in question alike. Chris O’Reilly, of the Liberty Soup Run, a non-profit mobile service who deliver food and sleeping bags to Dublin’s homeless population, stated explicitly that he believes the taskforce’s recommendation to be wrong. And the nonprofit organisation Focus Ireland, who provide services to the homeless and those at risk of homelessness, have described the plans as “depressing” – noting that for many, such services might the only way they can get a hot meal.
However, further comments made by Focus Ireland’s Director of Advocacy Mike Allen also emphasise the genuine issues with the current model for providing food to those in need, issues which presumably prompted the bylaws themselves: “The society that we want to build in Focus Ireland does not include the necessity for people to stand in the dark, in the cold, to be handed out soup on the street.”
Here, we see the common ground which charitable and volunteer groups share with the taskforce regarding this issue; that services need to be improved. Because, as blunt and as inexplicably unsympathetic headlines such as “The Council Wants To Ban Soup Kitchens” read, there is of course seeds of reason behind these controversial plans.
Because in an ideal world, yes – homeless people and those experiencing food poverty should not have to queue up in freezing temperatures for the chance of a hot meal… but they have been for the past number of weeks. They have been for the last few years, frankly.
Because ours is far from an ideal world: food poverty is increasing year on year and Ireland’s homeless levels are at a crisis level – the highest they’ve ever been, with over 15,000 people on the streets. The Taskforce for Dublin is not wrong to remind us people shouldn’t have to queue on the street to eat, but the fact that people continue to, every day, should exemplify just how crucial the services they would seek to prohibit are. Yes, no one should have to deal with the glaring flaws of the current model – but they wouldn’t if they didn’t have to.
What feels glaringly obvious is that there would have been very little backlash to the regulation of on-street services for the purposes of safety and dignity, had the news of these bylaws come hand-in-hand with the announcement of similar indoor and/or regulated alternatives. If the issue is the current model, then the solution is a better model – not just gutting the current one and leaving a tremendous gulf in the provision of crucial services. Karl Mitchell, who represented the council on the taskforce, did indeed comment that any new laws would be complemented by an increase in indoor services – however we’re yet to see any specific details to back this up.
In the absence of any such action, it gets harder and harder to dispel mounting criticism that these bylaws represent an attempt to superficially “clean up” Dublin’s image – gentrifying the city centre instead of tackling the root societal issues fuelling issues likes homelessness and food poverty – particularly when the taskforce’s own rationale includes critiquing the fact that people gathering on the street to access services “degrades the public realm”.
The prominence of on-street services is symptomatic of a country whose homelessness and food poverty levels have reached such a crisis point, that much of the work done to help those in need is done by volunteers, who give up their own free time to try and alleviate the effect that the government’s failures – be it in housing, in food services, in supports – are having on their fellow people. The prohibition of these outdoor services, if enacted without the introduction of indoor alternatives capable of catering to the same amount of people, would be symptomatic of yet another failure on the governments part, and indicative of a government that would prioritise the way their capital city appears to look, over the experience of its citizens.
