PROPOSALS TO OUTLAW on-street soup runs for homeless people in Dublin city have been criticised by groups who provide services for those who desperately need them.

The Irish Times reported today that new bye-laws could put an end to on-street soup kitchens and food banks for homeless people in the capital over health and safety concerns.

A report by one social policy consultant for Dublin City Council three years ago linked the services to anti-social behaviour, such as drug-dealing, and recommended that the runs should be placed indoors and elsewhere. 

However, Chris O’Reilly of the Liberty Soup Run in the city centre said he believes the recommendation is wrong. He said that, like others involved in soup runs, he first engaged with the council on the issue when the report was being drafted in 2021.

He spoke to The Journal while preparing his van and supplies as he planned to head out on the city’s streets this evening – despite planning not to operate over Christmas – after he saw many people in need while he was shopping on St Stephen’s Day.

“I’m not going to stop for nobody, because these people depend on us,” he said.

Although some groups are registered with the HSE and are registered charities, other smaller soup runs are put together by local residents in the inner-city and do not have such registration. 

O’Reilly’s non-profit service operates on a voluntary basis from a van which acts as a mobile unit to deliver food and sleeping bags to homeless people on the streets of the city.

Lorraine O’Connor, the head of Muslim Sisters of Éire – another group that feeds the homeless on Dublin’s streets – said that more time and attention should be directed to solving issues around homelessness.

The group, which operates in Dublin city every Friday evening, is a registered charity and is affiliated with the HSE, meaning all volunteers must receive food-safety and first aid training and be Garda vetted.

However, O’Connor said that she and others who run food banks and soup runs will not stop their work if the law seeks to restrict it.

She told The Journal that everyone who runs an on-street soup kitchen or food bank is doing it from a place of compassion.

“They may not be registered or trained; but I tell you, compassion comes before any of that, empathy comes before any of that and a friendly face comes before any of that,” she said.

“All of those people give that [to those in need] and I know that because we’ve been working together for so long. It’s a horrible situation.”

The proposals by the council to end outdoor soup runs follow a report by social policy consultant Mary Higgins, who found that such services have “disrupted businesses, intimidated individuals going about their daily work and contributed to increased anti-social behaviour on the city streets”.

“The model of on-street services where people queue for food and eat in full public view on the main streets of the city is inherently undignified and is potentially unsafe,” the report reads.

The recommendation to end soup runs may be enacted as part of new bye-laws by the local authority in the new year, following the findings of the Dublin city taskforce report commissioned by Taoiseach Simon Harris earlier this year.