Restaurant making a (tasty) meal of helping out

A TIMOLEAGUE restaurant is donating hundreds of free meals to people cocooning in their village and surrounding area.

Monks Lane, run by Gavin and Michelle Moore, has been closed for business for several weeks now due to Covid-19 restrictions.

They had operated a take-out service initially, but after the Taoiseach’s rallying cry for support on March 27th, they closed completely.

However despite this, the couple generously decided to cook and donate meals for those most in need. Now with the help civic-minded locals, they have been delivered to grateful recipients over the past few weekends.  Gavin and Michelle said that after a couple of days of sadness and worry they realised they could actually do something for others in their community.

‘There is such great community spirit in Timoleague and West Cork in general that it was very easy to make a couple of phone calls and before we knew it Sheila McCarthy, Helen Crowley and Eamon Barry from Timoleague community support group had put together a plan to distribute meals with a network of local volunteers and a list of anyone in our area who may be cocooning or unable to make it to the shop. They were already doing brilliant work coordinating shop runs and essentials for people who couldn’t or shouldn’t go out at the moment so all we had to do was add in a few dinners. It’s wonderful to see so many people volunteering to help others and really underlines how lucky we are to live in such a special part of the world,’ they said.

Sheila McCarthy said people were beyond grateful to receive the meals and said that they were inundated with people offering to deliver them.

‘Around 80 people responded to our request looking for help and we’re so grateful to all the volunteers, and of course to Gavin and Michelle,’ she said. At the beginning of the pandemic, Monks Lane also delivered meals to frontline staff in Clonakilty Community Hospital and to those at the National Ambulance Service base in Clonakilty.