For more than 26 years Martin Waters has made the misery of others his daily concern. As president of the Castlebar conference of St Vincent de Paul, his has been one of the compassionate faces of a caring organisation reaching out to hundreds of people on their uppers.Nothing surprises him. As the yawning chasm between the wealthy and the impoverished widens, Martin and his 45 colleagues strive to deal with the distress, the despair, the hardship, the melancholy, the anguish, the quagmire of hopelessness into which so many people lucklessly stumble.
Once it was the simple matter of a few visits to houses, of knocking on doors and delivering a few bob weekly to the needy. Now the ills, springing from the dark side of a modern, affluent society, are far more complex.
Hardship comes in all guises, ruthless and indiscriminate, open and in ambush. Ensnared people become desperate and Vincent de Paul is their last resort, their only remaining refuge.
