Pennies make euros for st vincent de paul

As the saying goes 'pennies make pounds’, but for the Mullingar Conference of St Vincent de Paul, pennies recently made hundreds of euro.

The conference’s coffers got a timely boost last week when it received a donation from the estate of a recently deceased local woman via solicitor Tom Shaw. Mr Shaw was administering the 90-year-old’s estate when he discovered that she had a “pile of pennies and tuppences”. While the punt is no longer legal tender, Mr Shaw brought the “bags and bags” of coins to the local branch Bank of Ireland.

“The bank told me that they have a scheme whereby they collect pennies and tuppences to give to charity and I said I’d be delighted to co-operate with that. We have €467 for St Vincent de Paul. I’m sure they will put it to good use. She (Mr Shaw’s client) would have been very happy to see the money go to a cause.”

The president of the Mullingar Conference John Bourke thanked everyone who was involved for the donation.

Although it stopped being legal tender in February 2002, there is still some £280m in punts in circulation, according to the Central Bank. The institution exchanges €10,000 worth of punts at its Dame Street base every day.

The Mullingar Conference, meanwhile, figures prominently in a new book that chronicles the 170-year history of St Vincent de Paul in Ireland.

While no records exist for the first decade of the conference in Mullingar, it is believed that it was established around 1916.

Seamus Mimnagh, who wrote the comprehensive local history that appears in the book, 'The Society of St Vincent de Paul in Ireland’, says that his efforts were helped by meticulous records kept by the conference from the mid-1920s.

The conference was formed during one of Irish history’s most turbulent periods, politically and economically.

According to Mr Mimnagh’s account, in 1929 it estimated that 20 percent of the town’s 5,000 population were living in poverty. A number of initiatives were established in the early years to help the poor of Mullingar, including a “boot scheme” to provide footwear for children, which continued until the 1950s, and a “poppy fund” to provide relief for ex-servicemen.

From Ireland’s last years as a British colony right up to today, St Vincent de Paul has been a constant presence in Mullingar and has provided support to tens of thousands of people.

Mr Mimnagh’s history of conference provides a valuable insight in the work done locally by the origination over the past century.

'The Society of St Vincent de Paul in Ireland – 170 Years of Fighting Poverty’, is available from all local book shops.