“It’s the best I’ve eaten in weeks, thank you very much,” a homeless man shouts to staff after devouring a full Irish breakfast at The People’s Kitchen in north Belfast.
Servers tell him to enjoy his day as he leaves the city’s only drop-in food centre for rough sleepers.
It’s Wednesday morning and the city is preparing to host the fourth day of Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann 2026.
Cups of freshly squeezed orange juice line the counter of the spotless diningroom where Amy, a former civil servant who has been homeless for three years, waits to speak to a housing officer. Bandages cover her feet, swollen with ulcers.
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“I would starve if it wasn’t for here,” she says.
The charity kitchen is located in a former Ulster Bank – two vaults house overflowing food and clothing donations – on the busy Antrim Road.
It is a short distance from the city centre and just outside the boundary of the temporarily pedestrianised fleadh zone. More than 800,000 people are expected to visit the festival this week.
People’s Kitchen founder Paul McCusker welcomes the event as an opportunity to showcase the city, “especially on the back of the racist riots” in June. But he is worried about the “displacement” of vulnerable people.
“Where a lot of the events are taking place, there’s rough sleepers who call the streets their home,” says McCusker, an Independent Belfast City councillor and A&E nurse.
“For us, it’s really been about the lack of planning for vulnerable people.
“What we’re finding over the past few days is that people who are homeless are being pushed out around the peripheries of the city – towards Botanic [in south Belfast] and the university area.
“Then we’re struggling obviously to find them, to see they’re okay and try and link in with them.”
There have been five overdoses on the streets since the fleadh began on Sunday, he says.
Daily briefings have taken place between homeless charities, voluntary agencies, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive and Belfast City Council regarding overnight issues.
“Two overdoses actually happened down Airport Road, which is unheard of,” says McCusker. “We also dealt with one yesterday morning. It was a young fellow lying in our car park; it was bad. Thankfully nobody has died.”
People’s Kitchen volunteers delivering meals on the streets have also expressed concern about reports from rough sleepers, who claim they’ve been told by police to “move on” and threatened with arrest.
McCusker says he raised the matter with police at a briefing earlier this week.
“The worrying thing is our outreach services are quite restricted at the minute in relation to the areas we can access,” he says. “Some of our service users said they were told they couldn’t come into the city centre until midnight. They were told to stay away. Police denied this.”
On Royal Avenue – the city’s main thoroughfare – there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of homeless people in recent days.
“Where have they gone?” asks McCusker. “Our outreach workers have been raising this at briefings every day.”
Additional emergency beds (the Housing Executive confirmed it has provided an extra 20 bed-spaces for “overnight provision” this week) have been linked to a reduction in rough sleepers overnight.
“You’re not allowed on the street at the minute. I feel like we’re being treated as the scum of the earth,” says Amy.
“I certainly didn’t choose to sleep on the street. I’m a professional but just in a very poor spot. Because I don’t fit into the category of drink or drugs, I would have gone into the town and relied on the kindness of people to give me a few pound between benefit payments.
“They have to realise that’s people’s lives, that’s people’s homes.”
When she tried to sleep on a bench in the city centre on Sunday afternoon, she was told to move on by police.
St John’s Ambulance volunteers dressed her feet with bandages.
“I was basically three blocks away from the main council stage area; police were coming around and moving you. That was all day.
“The reality is when you’re on the street, you’ll not really sleep at night because it’s not safe. You’ll mainly sleep a few hours during the day. That is your true person who is left stranded.”
Breakfast is almost finished as the housing officer arrives in the dining area shortly before 11am. A small queue forms to see her.
Elle, a young Glaswegian woman who arrived in Belfast on Sunday because it “wasn’t safe” to stay at home, is waiting for her turn.
“I hope she has some good news,” she says.
The previous evening she was given an emergency “crash bed” in a residential facility in north Belfast.
“You’re to be out of it by 8am and can’t go back until 9pm this evening,” she says.
“If it wasn’t for Paul [McCusker] and this place, I don’t know where I’d be. They’ve fed me – the soup is delicious – and let me shower and given me clothes. He treated me like a human being.”
Sitting beside her, Amy says she was also provided with emergency accommodation in the same facility for two nights this week.
“Ironically, inside three years they couldn’t give me a bed at all even after I was raped on the streets.
“The long and the short is, I wouldn’t have a bed only the fleadh was happening. It’s a bit like when a storm happens, they can accommodate us in churches; why can’t they do that all year round?”
“For me at times, it’s breathtaking to sit back and question how it has come to this; the amount of vulnerable people we’re dealing with has never been at this level,” he says.
When he founded The People’s Kitchen in 2016, they were feeding 10 people a week. The charity is providing 1,200 meals a week, at breakfast, outreach at night and drop-in dinners at weekends.
“People aren’t just homeless, there’s addiction and mental health as well. There’s people presenting who haven’t eaten in days,” he adds.
“Agencies stepped this up this week in terms of provision, but it was 11th hour. When the fleadh finishes, people will return to the streets, and we’re not really being consistent with our approach in how we deal with this long-term problem. It’s just being pushed around.”
