‘The atmosphere is great, there is a joyful buzz’

Paddy Sheridan feeding the homeless at the RDS, Dublin

I JOINED the Order of the Knights of Saint Columbanus 12 years ago. Next year will be our centenary year.

We haven’t missed one single year doing the Christmas dinner at the RDS. I was in charge during the pandemic lockdown, we had to split the guests between the RDS and the Mansion House, but we still managed to do it.

Christmas Day starts at 7.30am for our 200 volunteers and goes on until 3pm.

Dinner itself is table served and goes on from 11.30am to 1.30pm, then after that there’s a clean up and furniture to put away.

We have two professional chefs, they’ve been volunteering for 15 to 20 years – Patsy Mcguirk and George O’brien – they run the kitchen.

It can be difficult to predict numbers because we have an open door situation. We get 200 meals started on first thing and the chefs add to that as you see people arriving. We can cater for up to 500 meals on site.

We also give out 5,000 takeaway meals – it’s all traditional Christmas fare; turkey, ham, stuffing, veg, pudding, dessert and mince pies.

It would have been mainly Dublin’s homeless and hostel residents 10 or 15 years ago, now we have more families. We have people in emergency accommodation who have no cooking facilities.

The atmosphere is great, there is a joyful buzz and plenty of people to chat to. We have live entertainment with a stage set up in the hall.

It has worked very well for me – when I started my children had grown to teenagers, but it can be more difficult for volunteers with young children to give up their time.

Influencer Sharon Smurfit, also at the RDS

Through volunteering with the Liberty Soup Run with Chris O’reilly I knew about the Christmas Day lunch with the Knights of

Columbanus. I’m going there early before any of the guests arrive to interview the volunteers and help with the set up. There are buses coming from town every 20 minutes to bring guests to the RDS. We’ve been handing out the cards to emergency hostels and posters to tell anyone who’s homeless to bring their kids and have a dinner. There’s meals there for everybody and everyone gets the care package going home. It’s an amazing day.