Honorary degree for powerhouse behind Cork's Penny Dinners

Caitriona Twomey and her siblings used to get a annoyed when their father, Tom Lynch, did a disappearing act in Cork on Christmas mornings.

“We would be cheesed off because we were waiting to open our selection boxes and he was out ‘gallivanting’,” the co-ordinator if Cork Penny Dinners recalls. “One year we even wrote him a letter about it. He still didn’t tell us what he was doing. He just laughed and threw his arms around us.”

In time, Twomey learned there was a good reason why the family had to wait.

“When I was older I found out that he was down in the College of Commerce looking after the elderly with food for the day. When I was about 12 he brought me with him,” she says.

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“I didn’t know what to do at first. I was embarrassed. Then the people at it were trying to give me a few bob. I was just a kid. That was the start of [it] really.”

Lynch, an army man, died in 1996. After his death, Twomey heard numerous tales of his generosity and came to realise she had inherited the “helping gene”.

Roof

Twomey, who grew up near the North Cathedral in Cork city, says that on one occasion a man approached her on a train to say that her father and late mother, Breda, had saved the roof over his family’s heads.

The man said that once he promised the Lynches that he would “give up the drink” they gave him the money he needed. They then declined to take the cash back later.

Twomey, who has run Penny Dinners for 12 years, is to receive an Honorary Doctorate of Laws at University College Cork on Friday, alongside such figures as British crime writer Martina Cole – who was born in Essex to Irish parents and is a patron of Women’s Aid.

The Penny Dinners service dates back to the 1840s and is Cork’s oldest independent caring organisation. Its official remit is to provide a daily food service to the needy. However, Twomey also finds accommodation for people, drops food to housebound clients who cannot visit the organisation, and oversees night classes onsite.

Volunteers

She says she is grateful for the support of the 90 volunteers who keep the show on the road and to the companies and schools who contribute to the daily operation. In particular, she appreciates the outpouring of support received at Christmas, when the Penny Dinners building turns into the “Little Miracle of Hanover Street” due to the volume of donations received.

In spite of the economy performing strongly and unemployment falling, Twomey says the numbers coming to Penny Dinners in need of a hot meal and a drink has not fallen.

She says a large number of families avail of the Penny Dinners daily food service and women with bare cupboards often come seeking assistance.

“The end of the recession didn’t make any difference here. We have lots of people. Some people are able to move on from here. Some people stagnate and can’t get out,” Twomey says.

More information at corkpennydinners.ie