Periods rarely make front page news. They’re painful, messy and come a little too regularly to be all that noteworthy. But last month, Homeless Period Ireland partnered with Lidl Ireland to help them become the first major retailer in the world to offer free period products in stores nationwide, garnering headlines in the New York Times and newspapers all over the world. 

It was a groundbreaking initiative that sees the German retailer offer a dedicated coupon for a free box of sanitary pads or tampons per customer each month through their Lidl Plus app. 

Claire Hunt is the woman behind the grassroots initiative Homeless Period Ireland, raising awareness, distributing and coordinating donations to those in need of period products and generally being a “thorn in the side of many politicians” since 2016. 

While last month’s coup gave cause for celebration, it underpinned something Hunt’s known for a long time: period poverty is not that difficult to remedy. “What I find hugely motivating is that it’s a poverty issue and it’s a fixable issue. I’m hugely conscious of fashion feminism, which goes on and off the radar and I don’t want this to be another bandwagon issue. I’m coming from the poverty side of it – nothing more and nothing less. That’s always been my aim.”

Far from a hell-raising evangelist, Hunt is a young stay-at-home mother-of-two who fits this phone interview in as she walks her daughters home from their weekend Gaelic football. With no other social activism on the CV, just an innate sense of kindness toward people inherited from her own mother, she was enlightened about period poverty through the Ken Loach movie I, Daniel Blake, which tells the story of a woman on welfare who is caught shoplifting. 

“When they opened her bag and discovered pads, that was my awakening. I did a bit of research and discovered period poverty was very much an issue. If you experience food poverty or fuel poverty and you’re a woman, you’re inevitably experiencing period poverty. It’s a part of a bigger picture.” 

Statistics report as many as 85,000 individuals around Ireland may be at risk of period poverty, with inadequate access to menstrual hygiene, including sanitary towels and tampons, washing and waste management facilities, and education. 

When Hunt started out, there was already a small volunteer group called Homeless Period Dublin and she became a volunteer driver, transporting products where they were needed most –domestic abuse shelters, women’s centres, drug rehabilitation centres.

“The girl who set that up was doing a masters and her circumstances changed and she asked me to take it over. It’s one of those things, when you see an issue, it’s easy to turn your back and we can all do that. But I got inspired by it all. For me, it’s about providing dignity. That’s what annoys me about the period movement – it’s seen as trendy, which doesn’t sit well with me. There’s a huge amount of bandwagoning happening.”

Hunt used social media to publicise the drive for product donations, which she stored in her garden shed. As the movement grew she started approaching a number of city centre businesses to provide drop off points. “Some were an out-and-out ‘no’ and some were very receptive. In my head I was going to get this to County Council level and then stop.” 

But things didn’t quite pan out as planned. By 2018, the social media account she had created was generating enough noise to get a bit of political traction and South Dublin County Council came on board by providing period products in all of their public buildings. “I thought the other councils would follow suit, but they didn’t.” 

Then Catherine Martin T.D. reached out. “As Chair of the Oireachtas Parliamentary Women’s Caucus she was aware of the work I was doing and she was just amazing.” Hunt contributed to the drafting of The Period Poverty motion, which was put in place in 2019 and called on the government “to provide a range of free, adequate, safe and suitable sanitary products and comprehensive, objective menstrual education information distributed through all public buildings, including schools, universities, direct provision centres, refuges, homeless services, Garda stations, hospitals, maternity hospitals, prisons, detention centres and rehabilitation centres,” along with a number of other measures to tackle period poverty and de-stigmatise and normalise menstruation. 

While initially encouraging, it soon got put on the back burner. “I get it,” says Hunt. “It’s very tiny in the greater scheme of things. But while the Government do what they need to do there are still women getting their periods every month.”

When Covid hit, the challenges became more complicated. “I had to protect myself and the other volunteers, but periods don’t stop for pandemics either. So I worked hard at keeping the momentum going. The sad thing is more and more families are availing of food banks due to Covid. I know we’re a nation who give out about the church, but something I had never realised before is some of the archdiocese collections would have traditionally gone to food banks. With the churches closed a lot of food banks had to close down as a result.” 

Hope came again when Lidl Ireland got in touch to brainstorm some ideas and Hunt worked with them to create a programme she could fully endorse. “I haven’t registered as a charity because this shouldn’t exist. That’s my goal and they got that and were very understanding. It would have been easy for them to say ‘here’s a load of products’ and people would have thought they were amazing for that, but they wanted to do something that was a continuous relationship. 

“They were so respectful of me and what I was trying to do. We came up with the idea of the voucher on the app and I think that’s really, really powerful. With period poverty you have your obvious categories, women in homeless shelters or drug rehabilitation centres, but when we live in our bubbles, we can forget the women who only have €50 to feed a whole family for a week. I think it’s clever we found a way to help those families with this because it’s all very discreet. My main message, which Lidl Ireland fully took on board, was about providing dignity. They also brought Simon Communities on board, which are nationwide. So they really considered all angles. And they’re giving me a quarterly donation of products, so anyone who’s missed out I can still get to them. That covers all angles.

“They took into consideration how I work and were just genuinely looking for ways to make things better. They’ve also brought in the sports side of things because I’m hugely passionate about that and a lot of girls drop out of sport when they hit puberty. So what they’ve done is provided period products to all the LGFA clubs around Ireland, who do a fantastic education programme on periods, they’re following through on everything. It will be a continuing project until the government steps in. It was brought to the Seanad by Rebecca Moynihan and Lorraine Clifford-Lee and they had a big row over it which I found was upsetting. It’s non contentious, it’s in the Programme for Government [to provide free period products in publicly funded educational settings] and it’s time they followed through on it now. I’ve been told it will, but enough talking about it now. It’s frustrating that if you want to get something done it has to be at a grass roots level.”

Inspired by the initiative, CarePlus Pharmacy pledged their own commitment to the cause. And although interest was shown from other brands, Hunt is hesitant to onboard more retailers. “I nearly don’t want to see more supermarkets get involved, for the same reason I refuse to become a charity, because this shouldn’t exist and it’s not supermarkets’ responsibility, it’s the government’s. 

“It’s too easy to blame men on this one. The support from men and male politicians has been good, it’s just it’s not a massive issue and when you look at the whole state the country’s in at the moment I get it, but it’s also very fixable. It’s just time we fixed it.”