Pat Doyle, CEO, Peter McVerry Trust While news of a small decrease in national homeless figures must be welcomed, the challenge is to work for more substantive decreases, homelessness campaigners have said.
New figures from the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government indicate that 9,681 people of people accessed State-funded emergency homeless accommodation in March, down slightly on 9,807 in February.
“We welcome this small but important decrease in the numbers recorded as accessing homeless services in March,” said Pat Doyle, CEO of Peter McVerry Trust.
“The goal now is to make sure that this decrease is followed by more frequent and substantial decreases in the numbers of people in homeless services,” he added.
Focus Ireland’s Mike Allen stressed that figures over the last year give no real cause for optimism.
“The overall trend shows a clear 37% increase in family homelessness in Ireland and we believe that this shows that the Government strategy is still failing to tackle the deepening crisis. These figures clearly show that the Government Rebuilding Ireland strategy is not delivering the amount of housing that we need to get to grips with the crisis,” he said.