IF IT were not for places like the Merchants Quay “tea-rooms”, which serves breakfast and lunch to about 200 homeless people each day, “there would be a lot more deaths on the streets”, says Greg Hill.
The 41-year-old, who was homeless for a number of years, sleeping rough and in hostels, still comes to the tea-rooms every morning for breakfast.
He was one of about 120 people at the drop-in centre – which is entered through a small doorway in a street behind the quays – to mark the 40th anniversary yesterday of its founding in 1969.
It serves tea, coffee, sausages, toast and cereals every morning from 7am, and a lunch until the afternoon.
It was opened by Franciscan Friars Br Sebastian and Br Salvador, to cater then to the mainly older men who were Dublin’s homeless.
When it opened originally it provided just tea and toast, but today it provides more hot food and also shower facilities and a basic health-care service.
It was not a cause of celebration that four decades on the service was more needed than when first established, said Tony Geoghegan, director of Merchants Quay Ireland.
The centre caters daily for about one-tenth of the city’s homeless population, and Mr Geoghegan asked: “Should we celebrate the fact that today so many of Dublin’s 2,000 homeless people have to rely on day centres such as ours and on night shelters to meet very basic needs?
“Should we celebrate the fact that today more people than ever before are living in fear of losing their livelihoods and their homes?” None of these could be celebrated, he said.
“Today we are celebrating 40 years of hope and 40 years of work for justice.”
Though a party of sorts was held yesterday, Greg arrived, as usual, at about 8.30am for breakfast.
“I just got into a transitional housing scheme run by the Simon [Community],” he explains. “It’s a 12-month place and please God I’ll get into a steady little place that will be my home.
“Things were very bad till I got that place. I was on the streets, on the drugs. There’s not much else to turn to when you’re on the streets. I first got homeless because of fighting with my family.
“You’d be lucky and a friend might put you up for the night but that can’t last, and you get further down, and when you’re down you get kicked bad.”
He has stayed in a number of hostels and has slept rough.
Asked what the drop-in service means to him, he says it’s his “breath of fresh air every day”.
