Brendan Dempsey of the SVP said the charity has noticed an increase in the amount of rubbish dumped in the clothes bins, and said that this waste in turn spoils the clothes which had been donated for a good cause.
“The clothes are good, but we’re getting quite a bit of rubbish in the last few years. You’d get potato peels, egg shells, babies’ nappies,” Mr Dempsey told Neil Prendeville on Cork’s Red FM.
“The worst I got was a dead terrier in a plastic bag,” he said.
“We have to get rid of that rubbish. Dumping rubbish from our recycling bins is costing us approximately €2,000 a month at the moment,” Mr Dempsey said.
He said the charity is also finding it harder to meet the increasing demands upon its services: “In the good old days, as we would call them, we had plenty of funds, and we had funds in reserves.
“Over the last number of years we ate into our reserves. They’re gone — we have nothing in the piggy bank.”
“We are depending on what comes in from the church-gate collections and from our own fundraising activity, shops etc, and the number of people requesting help has increased about 10% year-on-year. We simply don’t have the money to deal with the problems,” he said.
Lord Mayor of Cork Chris O’Leary will host a major fundraising concert next month in aid of the SVP, to help the city’s homeless.
The Midwest Young Artists Conservatory Orchestra from Chicago, supported by a seven-piece jazz ensemble, and guest tenor Paul Byrom of The Three Tenors will play The Let’s Make It Work concert on June 17 in Cork City Hall.
The event is being supported by the Irish Examiner and The Neil Prendeville Show on Cork’s RedFM.