Providing stability in times of turmoil

Owen Ryan talks to Cathal Oakes about his six years at the helm of St Vincent de Paul in Clare

 

 

WHILE the St Vincent De Paul doesn’t look to be repaid, let alone look for interest, there are some comparisons to be made between how the charity and the Troika offer support. That’s the view of Cathal Oakes, who finishes a six-year term as president of the charity in Clare on Thursday.

Like the Troika, St Vincent De Paul assists those in financial turmoil. It doesn’t give assistance without any conditions, instead working with the recipients to find a way towards sustainability.
“It’s the same principle. If the outgoings and the income don’t match there’s a problem. A bit like Greece and Cyprus, we’d be of the mindset that if people aren’t willing to help themselves to some degree and meet us half way, we’re reluctant to bailout.

“Now, in lots of instances there’s nothing you can do. If there are children involved and adults are mismanaging you just have to help anyway. If there’s a sense that children aren’t getting food, it’s a no-brainer. In lots of instances changing people’s attitudes is a very slow process, no more than changing my attitude takes a long time.

“If you go into a house and say they have to give up whatever they’re misspending money on, fags for example, it can take people a while to get their head around that,” he says.
A Cork man, Mr Oakes works for the coast guard in Shannon as a pilot, providing a Search and Rescue and an Air Ambulance service.

He’s been based in Clare since 2001 and got involved with St Vincent De Paul quite soon after arriving here. After being involved in its work in various parts of the county, he was given the president’s role.
“There was a revitalisation programme and I was asked to get involved with that. I was going around the county a lot, doing these workshops and it was kind of from that it came about.”

At that time he was doing shift work, which left him with the free time required. However, his hours are more regular now, which has made the last 18 months a little harder.
“For the last year and a half or so I’ve been doing Monday to Friday a lot more and you just don’t have the time. If you’re really busy in work when you come in the evening and you have to face into another ten emails, it gets to be hard going. The position really needs someone that’s retired or someone who’s on shift work, one or the other, but you do need to have the time.”

While St Vincent De Paul is linked to Christianity, he says it’s really about its ethos. While he isn’t particularly religious, he feels the philosophy underpinning the organisation is fantastic.
“The concept behind it is local people using local money to help local people. If you take it a step further, I’m fortunate enough that if I couldn’t pay the mortgage I could ring one of my brothers or sisters. If you can’t pay the mortgage and you don’t have a brother or sister who can help you out, who do you turn to? That to me is where the Christian ethos comes into it, it’s the whole idea.”

Being involved in St Vincent De Paul throws up plenty of dilemmas and when he encounters those he says its important to step into that mode of thinking, looking at people as one would look at a family member.  He also feels people are likely to return respect once it’s offered to them.
“What you do then is go right back to the very beginning and you ask yourself if this was my brother, what would I do? It’s the same thing, if your brother is tapping you for money all the time, eventually you’re going to tell him no more.

“If he’s making the best efforts you will keep helping. If you do that then you never really have a problem. It’s amazing as well, what I’ve found is that if you go into a house with that mentality, really seeing the person as an equal, they come around very quickly. People are uncomfortable and defensive but if you go in with that point of view the whole thing becomes simpler and they open up to you.”

His involvement in the charity has changed his outlook. “You get a much greater appreciation of things, an understanding really. It’s very easy if you’re on the outside, to look at, let’s say, poor people and blame them for it all the time.
“The example I always give is that my Dad was a pilot, so what did I do? I waited till I was 20 and became a pilot. I haven’t broken the mould. If you go into a poor person’s family and you say ‘Your dad sat on his ass but we want you to get a job’, what you’re asking him to do is break the mould and that’s a big ask.”
While it may indeed be a big ask, the Saint Vincent De Paul will make special efforts to help people who want to use education to make better lives for themselves.

“We have a team fully dedicated to education now and all the people on it have an education background. What happens is that if I go into a home and they say the problem is Johnny wants to go to college and he needs a laptop, they are referred to the education team who interview them.

“All of the money that’s given out is on a very consistent basis and there’s a huge follow up. If they don’t pass the exams they won’t get the money the following year. That has been a big success to be honest with you because it’s done in a very structured way and they have to step up to the plate.”

He finds that people who have done nothing wrong themselves, can often find themselves bearing the brunt of problems caused by someone else in their family.
“Friends of mine would know I’m involved in Vincent De Paul and some of them would say ‘you’re wasting your time, a lot of those people are taking you for a ride’. But a lot of the time the person with the problem isn’t the person who’s causing it, at all. It could be a son who won’t turn off the immersion and a mother who’s afraid to take him on. It can be very simple and you’d say ‘look you need to take him on’ and she might say she can’t take him on or is afraid to take him on.
“If there’s an emergency thrown in and an emergency can be that it’s lashing rain and freezing cold and a child is sick and needs a taxi to Shannondoc at three in the morning that’s going to cost €15. Now the weekly budget is gone.”

Confidentiality is a core value of the organisation and often someone may not want their spouse to know that support has been sought.
“We’ve had a lot of incidences where a wife would be coming to us and she’d keep it confidential from her husband, just to protect him. There’s no issue with that and it’s happened on numerous occasions.”

He says the people of Clare have responded generously to St Vincent De Paul and, without their support, nothing can be done. He also says that during his six years as president he was amazed by the energy of the volunteers.
“There are people who are involved in St Vincent De Paul in their 70s and 80s and they’d blow you away. They’re so understanding, they’re so compassionate and so clued in.”

It’d be understandable if Cathal’s enthusiasm for the work of St Vincent De Paul had flagged at some point, but he says that didn’t really happen.
“I never really got disillusioned. Without trying to sound too flowery, a lot of people who are poor are fantastic fund managers, they’re amazing. The reason that they’re in that circumstance isn’t always their fault and you’d say ‘how could you be judging this person anyway, look what happened to the country’. Sometimes you’d go into a house and say they’re overspending, they borrowed too much money or they were spending on superfluous things and then you’d say to yourself, ‘Well, what did the country do?’”