Food bank in Enniskillen now feeding 1 in 5 people in the town.
On 13 April 2019, the Fermanagh Herald ran an article detailing the experience of a food bank which services the town. The Enniskillen Foodbank manager, John Shades, stated that in 2018, the food bank supplied over 2,400 people with food parcels: "It’s disproportionate, but at the minute we are feeding 1 in 5 people in the town." He expanded on this with a statement that the population of the town was approximately 14,000. The Enniskillen Foodbank is a member of a UK network of 428 food banks that are supported by Trussell Trust. For 2017-18, the Trussell Trust stated that its food bank network "distributed 1,332,952 three-day emergency food supplies to people in crisis, a 13% increase on the previous year". The trust attributes the increase to the roll-out of the Universal Credit public policy. Although there is no data for Northern Ireland, the trust reported from its survey in Great Britain that many Universal Credit claimants had to come to food banks after long waits for payment and administrative problems pushed them into debt. [...] The figure of supplying 2,400 people with food parcels stated by the Enniskillen Foodbank manager does not match up with the figures Trussell Trust shared with FactCheckNI. Using the Trust’s data, their estimate of two food parcels per claimant per year, and the average of 2.5 persons per household in Northern Ireland, we estimate that 1,350 people, or 9.8% (1 in 10) of the town population was helped. The claim is inaccurate.