CRITICISM of public officials and civil servants appears to have reached epidemic proportions in the media of late, particularly in the tabloids. Conscientious civil servants who strive to serve the State and the people are frequent targets of undeserved criticism.

But there was a time not so long ago in this country when many people relied on certain civil servants to help make ends meet, particularly at a time when many Dubliners had a hard time keeping the wolf of poverty from their doors. There have been, and still exist, many outstanding and unknown civil servants who have used their talents and dedication to carry out great humanitarian and charitable work for the less fortunate and disadvantaged in Irish society.

Two such civil servants deserve particular mention. One was Frank Duff from Blackrock, best known as the founder of the Legion of Mary. What is not so well known is that he resigned his very senior position in the Civil Service in 1932 to devote the rest of his life to the Legion.

In the process, he founded the hostels for the homeless in Morningstar Avenue and North Brunswick Street. Many of the volunteers who presently work in these hostels are civil servants who help to cook and clean for the residents in their own free time and at weekends.

The other not so well known civil servant was John McGuinness from Dalkey, a senior revenue officer at Dublin Castle up to his death in 1947. His story needs to be told because his service to the poor was legendary.

He was born in Dun Laoghaire at the turn of the century into a large middle class family. He entered the Civil Service as an 18 year old clerk with the revenue department at Dublin Castle, just three years before the State became independent. It was not, however, until he became a member of the Society of St Vincent de Paul in 1924 that he became deeply involved in charitable work for Dublin's poor.

This remarkable civil servant thought nothing of cycling around the city, collecting and distributing used clothing and footwear and personally begging material assistance from businesses such as bakeries and tobacconists.

He apportioned most of his salary to finance this charitable work by purchasing essential items such as shoes and clothing for children and destitute families. In addition, he organised office collections and prize draws in support of the St Vincent de Paul Society's relief work for the homeless and unemployed in the Dublin of the 1930s and 1940s.

This was a time when unemployment and poverty were rife in Dublin and elsewhere. Many husbands and fathers from most counties in Ireland were forced to leave their families in search of work. John McGuinness and his St Vincent de Paul Society colleagues provided boat tickets and financial aid to many who otherwise could not raise the means to travel to England in search of work.

The Society's annual reports of the 1930s provide a grim picture of the misery and destitution of many Dubliners. For instance, in 1939 alone, the society's night shelter in Back Lane recorded 26,000 admissions and provided 52,000 meals for the homeless.

When John McGuinness made the conscious decision to reject wealth and materialism, he moved out of the suburban family home and changed his lifestyle. He had no social life to speak of instead preferring to spend most of his evenings and free time working for the Society, as well as a host of other charitable activities visiting hospices and lodging houses and decorating and converting a dilapidated building in High Street into an unemployed working men's club, where he cleaned toilets, painted and scrubbed and swept floors.

He led an austere lifestyle in a sparsely furnished room, with little in the way of comfort or possessions. This enabled him to devote the bulk of his Civil Service salary to providing for the poor. He died at the early age of 46 from a form of malnutrition and was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery on St Valentine's Day in 1947.

As a senior civil servant, he earned a good salary for the times, but £69 was all that remained of John McGuinness's total wealth when he died, and even this was allocated to charitable causes according to a prepared list found in his room. Unlike other well known Dubliners, such as Matt Talbot and Frank Duff, this remarkable civil servant is now largely forgotten, although possibly not by some of those small barefoot tenement children who had good reason to remember his generosity and compassion.

Divine providence evidently wished both of these remarkable men to do for the Irish Civil Service and white collar workers what their fellow Dubliner Matt Talbot had done for labourers and the working class to devote themselves in service to their fellow Irishmen and women and to give an example of holiness in their religious and charitable activities.

To read the media's recent criticism of civil servants, one would think that they were all idle, overpaid and accountable to no one. But they seldom mention the numerous young civil servants who undertake voluntary work abroad for aid agencies such as Goal and Concern. They seldom mention other anonymous individuals who donate their free time to the hostels for the homeless and other forms of pastoral work.

Such people continue with the great charitable work undertaken so many years ago by those civil servants from the south side of Dublin, who have left a humanitarian legacy that can never be obliterated.