The number of homeless people in Ireland hit record figures last month, with over 10,500 people accessing emergency accommodation.
New figures released by the Department of Housing show that there were 10,568 people in emergency accommodation in July – an increase of 76 on the previous month.
This is a slight increase compared to June, where 10,492 people were recorded as homeless.
July is the seventh consecutive month where the number of people accessing emergency accommodation has risen.
In total, there were 7,431 adults who accessed emergency accommodation in the last week of July. Of those, 4,771 were male and 2,660 were female.
A majority of those people were located in Dublin, with 5,209 homeless adults reported last month.
There were also 3,137 children recorded as accessing emergency accommodation.
Charities have expressed serious concern at the record level of homelessness across the country.
Spokesperson for the Dublin Simon Community Caoimhe O’Connell called on the Government to work with the charity on a crisis plan as a matter of urgency.
“We are extremely distressed by the ongoing rise in the number of people presenting in emergency accommodation,” said Caoimhe O’Connell.
“Last month, we broke a record we never wanted to reach in Dublin and now, devastatingly, the same has happened at a national level. In our fifty years of providing homeless services, the situation has never been this bleak or urgent.”
O’Connell called on the Government to work with Dublin Simon and other non-governmental organisations on a crisis plan to address the homelessness emergency.
Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien said the Government, local authorities, and NGOs are making every effort to reduce homelessness.
He said that funding is in place to deliver 10,500 social homes this year, including 9,000 new build homes, “and our pipeline into the future is strong”.
The minister said a number of factors have eroded improvements which had been made in reducing the number of people in homelessness, “including an increase in ‘notices to quits’ in relation to tenancies and a decline in available Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) properties”.
“Government are working to progress each of them and we know that key to ending homelessness is the delivery of new social housing and boosting overall supply,” Minister O’Brien said.
“Our Housing First Programme, which is one of the key responses in ending long-term homelessness among those with complex health and mental health needs, has a fantastic tenancy sustainment rate and is being significantly scaled up – we will provide 1,319 Housing First tenancies this year.
“There are 18 separate actions set out in Housing for All to help us to end homelessness.”
David Carroll, chief executive of Depaul, who provide homelessness services across Ireland, said that there needed to be a “renewed focus” on social and affordable housing for single people.
“Single people are some of the most vulnerable we meet coming through the doors of our services and are the ones who find it the hardest to access long-term accommodation,” Carroll said.
Labour’s Housing spokesperson, Senator Rebecca Moynihan said that the current situation was “a national shame”.
“We need to do everything we can to protect people from falling into homelessness in the first place. Government must get real and stop seeing housing as a commodity. Housing is a human right.”