Messages from Leadership

Dear Friends, Supporters, and Partners,

As we look back on 2025, we do so on the cusp of a milestone: 55 years of Cork Simon Community standing alongside the men and women of Cork who have nowhere else to turn. It is an anniversary that belongs to all of us – to the volunteers who founded this community, to those who carry it forward today, and to every person who has trusted us with their story. The year just past, and the year ahead, are both reminders of why that work matters as much now as it ever has.

2025 was another demanding year. Homelessness across Ireland reached record levels, and here in the Southwest the pressure was unrelenting. By the end of the year, 777 adults were in emergency accommodation in our region – 610 of them single adults facing homelessness alone. These are not abstract figures. They are the people who came through our doors every night of the year, and they are the people we did not always have a bed for. Once again, our emergency accommodation operated at maximum occupancy throughout the year.

What concerns us most is not only the scale of need, but its shape. Homelessness is becoming more entrenched. People are staying longer in emergency accommodation. The pathways out – into secure, affordable housing, have narrowed further. The wider housing market continues to lock those on the lowest incomes out, and is increasingly pushing housing beyond the reach of those on middle incomes too. We see the consequences every day: men and women whose lives are placed on hold, sometimes for years, waiting for a place to call home that they can afford.

It is in this context that we welcomed the Government’s housing and homelessness strategy, Delivering Homes, Building Communities, published towards the end of the year. There is much in it to engage with, and we will do so constructively. But we have serious concerns about the visibility of single adult homelessness within that strategy. Adults facing homelessness alone represent almost three quarters of households experiencing homelessness in this country, and are the cohort with whom Cork Simon has worked for 55 years. Their needs cannot be an afterthought in national policy, and we will continue to make that case – through our research, our advocacy, and the everyday evidence from our services.

Against that backdrop, what our Community achieved in 2025 is remarkable. We continued to support people into housing, with Housing First now playing a role on par with our long-established tenancy sustainment work. Through our research and campaigning programme, we published two further Home Truths papers and hosted a half-day seminar during Simon Week that brought together policymakers, researchers and frontline practitioners. And we continued, every night of the year, to be there for people with nowhere else to go.

2025 was also the year in which we updated our organisational strategy – a significant piece of work that set our direction for the years ahead and sharpened our focus on the people we serve, the partnerships we depend on, and the kind of organisation we need to be to meet the challenges in front of us.

None of this happens without our volunteers. Cork Simon was founded by volunteers, and volunteers remain at the heart of everything we do – from our full-time volunteers working alongside our staff in the shelter and at our housing and specialist services, to the hundreds of people who give their time to our Soup Run, our fundraising, and our Board. They are part of the fabric of our community in the truest sense, and we are profoundly grateful to every one of them.

We are equally grateful to our statutory funders and partners – Cork City Council, the HSE, Cork ETB, and the other local authorities, Government departments and agencies across the Southwest whose continued support enables us to operate the scale and range of services that Cork and the wider region rely on. The work we do is only possible in partnership, and we value those partnerships deeply.

To the people of Cork and the wider community: thank you. Your generosity, your fundraising, your kindness, and your belief in what we do and the people we support continues to humble all of us. Cork Simon belongs to Cork, and Cork has never let us down.

Looking ahead, 2026 will be an important year for the organisation in more ways than one. Alongside marking our 55th year, we will commission  both an external review of our internal controls  and our triennial governance review – important steps in ensuring that Cork Simon remains as well-run as it is well-intentioned, and that we continue to meet the highest standards expected of us by our donors and funders, our supporters, and most importantly, the people who rely on us.

I want to thank my fellow Board members for their commitment, wisdom and generosity of time throughout the year. In 2025 we said farewell to Paula Byrne and Jim O’Shaughnessy, whose contributions over the years have helped shape the Cork Simon of today, and we are grateful to them both. We also welcomed two new directors, Deirdre O’Shaughnessy and Mark Sheehan, whose experience and perspective have already enriched our work.

My thanks also to our CEO, Dermot Kavanagh, and the senior management team, whose leadership through another difficult year has been steady, thoughtful and unwavering. And to every member of staff across Cork Simon: thank you for the care, skill and humanity you bring to your work every day.

As we look ahead, the scale of the challenge is clear – but so too is the strength of this Community. Together, we will keep doing what Cork Simon has done for 55 years: walking alongside the men and women who turn to us, holding hope on their behalf when they cannot hold it themselves, and working patiently and persistently towards a society in which no one has to experience the trauma of homelessness.

With deep gratitude,

Christine Moloney,
Chair of the Board of Directors,
Cork Simon Community.

Dear Friends and Supporters,

2025 was a year that tested every part of what we do and every person who does it. The need for our services did not ease. If anything, it deepened. And yet, night after night, our staff and volunteers showed up, our doors stayed open, and the community that makes Cork Simon what it is held firm.

The scale of need we witnessed last year was stark. Our emergency accommodation ran at maximum occupancy throughout the year, an average of 77 people every single night, the highest we have ever experienced. There were far too many occasions when we had no bed to offer someone who came to us. That is not something I can say without feeling its weight. On each of these occasions there was a person we did everything in our power to help, but for whom, on that night, we simply did not have enough.

Our Outreach team was busier than ever. Demand on the streets reached levels we have not previously seen. In October, our team took part in the EU Homelessness Count, joining a city-wide street count of people sleeping rough in Cork. On a single night, no fewer than 40 men and women were found sleeping rough across the city.  This is consistent with what our Outreach team encountered on the streets throughout the year.  For all of them, and for the many others in need across the city, our Soup Run was there without fail. An average of 43 people came in every night, for a hot meal in a friendly place: for many, a short hour in a long day in which to be seen, acknowledged and treated with dignity. Our Day Service welcomed 675 people through its doors, an essential hub offering healthcare, practical support, and, in the words of one person who used it, a moment’s escape from the daily grime of homelessness. Across every service, we saw the same pattern: fewer individuals overall, but presenting more often, staying longer, and arriving with needs that are increasingly complex.

Long-term homelessness is the sharpest expression of that complexity. 76 men and women in our emergency accommodation were long-term homeless in 2025, people who have been with us for six months or more, many of them for considerably longer. They account for two thirds of our shelter occupancy. For these men and women, the barrier is not a lack of will to move on. It is a lack of somewhere affordable and appropriate to move to.

That is the hard truth at the centre of our work right now. The housing market has narrowed the exits from homelessness to a degree we have not seen before. The number of people we newly housed in 2025, 38 men and women, reflects not a failure of effort or ambition, but the reality of a housing environment in which suitable, affordable options for single adults are vanishingly scarce. We will keep making that case to those with the power to change it.

There were genuine reasons for hope. Our Shelter Diversion programme helped men and women avoid entering emergency accommodation altogether, people who without that intervention might have joined the queue for a bed that wasn’t there and ended up sleeping rough. Our Hepatitis C Development Service addresses one of the least visible health crises within homelessness. Hepatitis C is a silent killer, progressing without symptoms for years and disproportionately affecting people with experience of addiction and rough sleeping. Reaching these men and women early, and supporting them through treatment, is work that saves lives, and that is recognised nationally as a model of how it should be done. And Housing First reached men and women further from the city, in County Cork and County Kerry, for whom this kind of intensive, person-centred support had previously been out of reach. It is a response to need that has always existed there but has not always had the right support around it. In 2025, Housing First supported more tenants than at any point in its history across the Southwest, accounting for almost a third of everyone we newly housed during the year, a share that continues to grow as the model delivers and changes the lives of the people who need it most. Our job now is to ensure the housing supply exists to keep pace with it.

Our Education, Training and Employment Project supported 257 learners during the year, people building skills, confidence and independence alongside everything else they are navigating. Our Addiction Treatment and Aftercare services supported 85 people on their journey to recovery and stable, affordable housing. Our Outreach, Day Service and harm reduction services provided care and connection to some of the most marginalised people in our city, many of whom would otherwise have no contact with services at all. Across every part of what we do, the commitment of our teams was extraordinary.

We are deeply grateful to our main statutory partners, Cork City Council and the HSE, whose continued support and investment have been critical to our ability to respond to homelessness in Cork. The strong culture of partnership they have helped build is one that others would do well to follow. Without that shared commitment, none of what you will find in this report would be possible.

Our relationships with Cork ETB, Cork County Council and Kerry County Council, along with Government departments and agencies nationally and across the Southwest, have been equally vital in supporting our services and the people who depend on them.

To our donors, more than 12,000 individuals, schools, community groups and companies who gave so generously in 2025: thank you. Your support, including over €5 million in donations and €1.7 million in legacy income, has been essential in keeping our doors open every night of the year. It is what allows us to say yes when we can, and to keep trying even when we cannot.

Looking ahead, 2026 offers a moment to reflect as we mark our 55th anniversary, but more importantly, a moment to recommit. We enter the year with a renewed organisational strategy, a clearer sense of where we can have the greatest impact, and an unwavering belief in what this community is capable of. The challenges are real and they are not going away. But neither are we.

What keeps me going, and what I believe keeps everyone in this community going, is not the scale of the problem. It is the people. The man who comes to the Soup Run every night and eventually, slowly, begins to trust us enough to accept more support. The woman who gets her keys after years in emergency accommodation and calls it the best day of her life. The young volunteer who arrives uncertain and leaves transformed. These are the moments that Cork Simon Community is built on, and they are the moments that will carry us forward.

With gratitude and determination,

Dermot Kavanagh,
Chief Executive,
Cork Simon Community.