The number of calls for help to the Society of St Vincent de Paul has more than doubled in the past year, the charity's Social Policy Officer has said.
Mr John Monaghan, also vice-president speaking as the Society's pre-budget submission is published this morning, said the head office in Dublin alone has seen the number of help calls increase by 94 per cent to 7,605.
"There have been massive increases," he told The Irish Times. "In some months they were particularly dramatic. If you take July 2002 for example, there were 350 calls for help. July this year there were 900. In October last year there were less than 600, October this year 1,100.
"It shows the depth of the problems and it is not just the traditional callers. We are seeing people in jobs, small business owners, who are really struggling to make ends meet.
"They are having real difficulties, a lot of them caused by things like indirect taxation - service charges, and transport costs. The RTÉ license fee increase, ESB increases. People on low incomes are being affected really badly. A group we are seeing we had never seen before are the ones we call 'sole-traders', who had a small business on their own which went belly-up, and they can't get emergency payments perhaps because they have some assets like a car or a van that they need if the business were to pick up again."
Mr Monaghan said healthcare costs were causing people to neglect their own health.
This morning's submission will show the charity has had to increase its spend by 20 per cent over the past year. Some €2 million of its annual budget of about €25 million was spent on food.
The society would be calling for a rise in the minimum social welfare payments of €15 to €140 a week, he said. It would also call for increases in the Back to School allowance, he added.
"The past six budgets have been marked by low taxes and not enough being spent on social provision. We will be calling for tax increases on the business community and other groups we believe can afford it," he said.
The State provides €9 million to the society, with the balance being collected from the public and other sources.
