THE LIGHTHOUSE CAFE in Dublin city centre provides essentials for people experiencing homelessness and food poverty. The week before Christmas it is bursting with people.
On any night of the week at the Pearse Street spot you will find workers who drop in post shift, parents picking up grocery supplies and elderly people from the local community who want a meal and a chat.
You will find asylum seekers who are sleeping on the streets, and Dubliners who have dealt with addiction all their lives, who depend on homelessness charities like Tiglin.
The premises in Dublin city centre run by the homelessness and rehabilitation charity Tiglin provides food and clothes, like many of the soup kitchens scattered around the city.
Inside, however, it has the atmosphere of a full blown Christmas party.
People are not just queuing up for food and supplies. They are chatting by the coffee station, having a Christmas singsong with a local choir, sitting at tables to eat and catching-up with friends they’ve made at the cafe, and downstairs, getting haircuts and browsing the clothes section.
Spent an evening in the Lighthouse cafe in Dublin this week. Met people from all walks of life - workers coming post shift, people with addiction, asylum seekers who are sleeping on the streets. Everyone said the food is great, but the music and craic makes it special. pic.twitter.com/b33xCMNpHY
— Eimer McAuley (@eimer_mcauley) December 21, 2023
Phil Thompson explains that while the main aims of the Lighthouse Cafe are to provide essentials and to encourage people to avail of Tiglin’s rehabilitation and education programmes, the team here also wants to help people enjoy themselves.
“In the process of delivering food and clothes to people in homelessness, we sometimes forget that people also want a bit of entertainment. Homeless people aren’t just excluded from services and opportunities, they are also excluded from having fun.”
This community has grown at a rapid pace in the last year, after 12 months of record-breaking homelessness levels in Ireland. Co-founders Phil Thompson and Aubrey McCarthy estimate that the cafe fed roughly 80 people a day here last year. In 2023 that number has risen to between 400 and 500 people each day.
On the evening The Journal dropped in to visit, there was a buzz of excitement about the entertainer booked to perform the following night – Dublin’s own Don Baker.
Carina, Paul, and John are sitting at a table having a cup of coffee, watching a video of Baker performing live on a phone.
“I just love him,” Carina tells the lads, “I can’t wait”.
Carina is 53-years-old. She moved to Dublin from Tullamore five months ago because she was offered an emergency accommodation hostel room here. She accepted it because there was no accommodation available closer to home, and she was facing homelessness.
Carina’s grateful to have a roof over her head, but she hasn’t adjusted to living in Dublin yet. “Google Maps has been my best friend,” she jokes.
“The hostel is okay. It’s got a lot of families in it, with kids like – it’s sad really. The kitchen is too small for all of us to cook, so I just come to places like this. I like the music here, and the people,” Carina says.
Having not known anyone when she first arrived in Dublin, Carina came to the Lighthouse cafe on the recommendation of someone in Offaly County Council.
“The soup kitchens on the street are nerve wracking to go up to, especially when you are a woman. It’s cold, and people are always cutting the queue in front of me. I’d get fuming like that,” she says, clicking her fingers.
“It’s relaxing here though,” she adds.
John Flynn is from Coolock. Now in his 60s, he has a roof over his head – but he’s dealt with alcoholism and homelessness intermittently since he was a child.
Me and my sister, we slept wrapped in bubble wrap out in a field at times.
“My parents were alcoholics. There wasn’t help for people like my mother then, they just put you in a madhouse. Have you seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? That’s what they did to her – shock therapy. It’s all changed now, I guess,” John says.
“I’m here for a sambo tonight, and a cup of coffee before I call out to see me sister. I go to a few places but this one’s the best. It’s the music, and the friendliness of people. I like talking to people that have had addiction. I was a chronic alcoholic. Now I’m off it, I think I’m doing okay,” he says.
“With drugs, addicts have to seek them out. I turn the corner and there’s ads for whiskey, pubs, displays in shops. Alcohol is everywhere, so you need to talk to people who know the score to keep on the right track. I was lost in it when I was younger, but thank god, I didn’t completely lose my head,” John adds.
“So I come here for those chats, and it’s interesting here too, there’s people from all different nationalities,” he said.
The Coolock man has become friends with Paul and Carina over the last five months. He jokes that he’s set them up – which they respond to with laughs and eye rolls.
John goes out of his way to pull other people into the conversation.
Raphael from Cameroon has been listening in quietly from the next table.
“Roger Milla!” John exclaims in his direction, Raphael initially looks puzzled.
“Roger Milla, what a player, scored the opening goal of the 1990 world cup! This man is from Cameroon, he’s a brother of Roger Milla,” John tells his friends.
Raphael laughs, and tells John that he used to play football back home too. The 34-year-old has been in Ireland for one week. The International Protection Office was not able to offer him accommodation when he went there on 15 December.
They were also unable to provide him with a tent, so he has been using a sleeping bag on the street by the quays for the last five nights.
“They were having a tent shortage, so I understand. I will go back and see if they can give me a tent another day.
“I was surprised not to have any accommodation here, but then I learned that they are prioritising the women and children, and I think that is right. I am a man, so I can survive and wait.”
The Cameroon man and his family have been victims of the violence and unrest that has devastated the English speaking regions of his home country since the Anglophone crisis broke out in 2017. 6,000 people have been killed, and over 700,000 have been internationally displaced as a result of the conflict.
The violence erupted when English-speaking citizens of Cameroon protested against discriminatory policies by the French-speaking government, and were met with violent repression. In the aftermath several groups of English-speaking citizens took up arms to fight for independence for the territory in Southern Cameroon where they live, which they refer to as Ambazonia.
Experts have said that acts of violence committed by both Government security forces and separatists could amount to crimes against humanity.
“It really is not safe. There have been mass killings. We can lose our jobs, they put us under investigation and arrest us very easily. I was put under investigation, and I was not able to contact my family for weeks. I don’t know what else I can tell you about that,” Raphael said.
He said that he has felt “welcomed” by people in Ireland, and has found the support of organisations like Merchant’s Quay Ireland and the Lighthouse Cafe to be vital in the last week.
On the streets, he ran into Mustafa, a Moroccan man whose home was devastated by the earthquake earlier this year, who arrived in Ireland a few days before Raphael.
Mustafa had eaten barely anything in two days.
“I met this nice man, this black man from Cameroon, he asked, do you need something to eat? I said yes, and we came here. I know where to go now,” Mustafa said.
Raphael and Mustafa now sleep side by side on the street, to protect one another.
“We are ensemble now, together on the street. It is better that way,” Mustafa said.
He explained that it is difficult to sleep outside because it is extremely cold.
“During the day, I am carrying around a 4 kilo rucksack, so I am tired. When I come here, I can eat something, talk a bit, sit here,” Mustafa adds.
The Moroccon man is getting his haircut by Spanish volunteer Samar.
“She is a good person, a good example for all of us,” he says.
“I would like to volunteer here too when I get accommodation and work,” Mustafa added.
Because Mustafa does not have great English, Raphael has been helping him communicate with the International Protection Office.
“Now he has an offer of accomodation to move into. I don’t yet, that is good though, I am glad I helped,” Raphael said.
“We both want a good future here. We want to be part of society, to contribute to Ireland,” he added.
Phil and Aubrey – Tiglin’s co-founders – said that when the Department of Integration runs out of accommodation to offer asylum seekers, they see a huge jump in the numbers attending the cafe.
“Three guys arrived here this evening and they had just been to the IPO, they had their paperwork with them. They were told to go straight down to the Lighthouse Cafe,” Aubrey said.
Often, the outreach officer at the Lighthouse Cafe will refer people who come to the cafe to services, or speak to them about taking part in a rehabilitation programme if they are dealing with addiction issues.
The Lighthouse cafe was originally founded by DCM, one of Ireland’s oldest charities, and is now fully staffed and led by Tiglin. Aubrey said that the cafe has done wonders for raising awareness of Tiglin and the charity’s mission.
“People could be knocking around here for a few years before they stick their hand up and say, OK, I am ready for the programme,” Phil explains.
Most of the volunteers and some of the workers with Tiglin have actually been through the Reduce the Use live-in rehabilitation programme themselves.
These include Croatian twins Jay and Allen Bobinac (26) who were homeless for a year in Ireland before they got into transitional housing with Tiglin.
They are now both working fulltime with the charity and pursuing MA degrees.
“We have evolved our services because we kept spotting the gaps people fell through. Aubrey is a businessman. We met through volunteering with the Salvation Army, and we got talking about how when people finish rehab, there is often no aftercare or long term support for them. We wanted to have people living in accommodation for nine months of a programme,” Phil said.
The Tiglin Men’s Rehabilitation centre opened in 2008. The first nine months of the programme sees people living inhouse, with the next seven months taking place in Greystones through a day service. The centre has 34 beds. A separate centre for women with 14 beds is also up and running. There are wait lists for people to get into both centers. Usually, those who enter the programme pay a portion of their social welfare payments towards its costs.
People who are going into these programmes can attend pre-entry workshops to prepare themselves at the Lighthouse Cafe.
Counselling, community employment training, and a referral service which offers people help with applications for medical cards, welfare payments and schemes are all available on site as well.
“We then noticed that even after people completed the extensive rehab programme, they are often going back to living situations where they previously used drugs or drank, and that makes it really hard for them to move forward. That led us to developing aftercare transitional housing,” Phil said.
Aubrey explained that after rehab, many people struggle to go into work or education, as their work history has gaps.
“We’ve now partnered with the South East Technological University to help our programme graduates get into education. This year, 77 people who have dealt with addiction issues have gone into higher education through that partnership, it is just fantastic,” he said.
For those who are not interested in higher education, Tiglin has developed community employment training, and has recently opened its own social enterprise business, the Rise on the Cove cafe in Greystones, that employs people who have been through the rehabilitation programme.
Conor, who has worked as one of the baristas at the cafe, said he “jumped at the opportunity” once the cafe opened.
“It was nice to be a part of something. I hadn’t felt like that in a while. It gave me a sense of identity,” he said.
Aubrey said that the cafe has done wonders for raising awareness of Tiglin and the charity’s mission.
“We’ve been working away quietly for the last 16 years, and It’s only recently we are becoming more known in the community. People are getting to see what we do, and they want to be a part of it and support us,” he said.
Phil acknowledges that though many people have become sober through their engagement with Tiglin, and have gone on to live happier, settled lives, there have also been tragedies along the way.
“Addiction is a horrible thing. We’ve all been to the funerals of the people that didn’t make it out to the other side. And then we have the people who become employed, who get married, who end up with a secure home.”
Aubrey said that the Tiglin team learned recently that one of their former regulars, a man called Peter, had passed away.
“He just disappeared, but we get people who stop coming for a while all the time. Then we found out that he had died, but no one had claimed his body. It had been on ice in the morgue. That was upsetting because his funeral could have been a special thing. We’re having a service for him tomorrow down at the GPO.
“Peter was homeless, but he had it together, his life wasn’t in chaos. We have losses like that sometimes,” Aubrey said.
Tiglin gets some state funding via the HSE and local authorities, but it is also dependent on donations from the public. You can contribute here.
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