Coming up to Christmas and some people find it very difficult financially to cope with everything. I get this and contribute in whatever way I can but just lately I helped out (while visiting) some friends in a Dublin area with a SVP night run so to speak. It involved giving sandwiches, parcels, and one person had envelopes to give as well. This wasn't to unfortunate people on the streets or anything, it was to particular apartment complexes and similar. The people being given the "charity" are obviously well used to the weekly run and in some ways it's a permanent event, so much so that in many visits they just took the parcels and demanded the envelope, opened it in front of the giver and weren't behind the door in saying, "Hey, there's only €50 in this, where's the rest?". Now don't get me wrong, I know and appreciate times are hard for some, but this just grates with me and I was told that this is widespread. Some of the people we called to, quite a few, gave me the impression that life is not too bad at all but that there's now an expectation of this being the norm. Had a chat with the volunteers afterwards and thankfully I'm not on my own in thinking the way I do. Some of these volunteers are really getting worried by what they're instructed to do and they know it's becoming an epidemic in the sense of some getting charity that certainly do not need it. The amount of money given out on our night run was in the region of €2000.00 cash plus almost a van load of food and goodies. It has upset me and I'm wondering has anyone else experienced this and what checks are there on charities, what they get, what they pay out, who gets what and are their any accounts/checks in place for all of this. There must be absolute millions involved.