The Department of Housing yesterday released its latest homelessness report, revealing that the number of homeless people in emergency accommodation in the State has reached 14,760, with 10,701 in Dublin alone.
This represents a 14% year-on-year increase in the capital.
The latest national figures include 4,561 children across Ireland.
Dublin Simon Community said in a statement: “The record-breaking homelessness in Ireland has become a broken record. It’s time for a government to break the cycle.”
People Before Profit Leader Richard Boyd Barrett TD said: “We have a housing crisis that gets worse by the month. House prices and rents are both at the highest levels ever recorded.
“House prices increased by 10% in the last 12 months alone, with no end in sight to the spiral of unaffordability.”
Deputy Barrett lambasted the Government for the apparent lack of new homes being made available to the public.
“The housing crisis is affecting every aspect of our society. Therefore it is all the more shocking that the Central Statistics Office published data this week showing 21,634 houses and apartments were completed in the first nine months of this year, less than the 22,325 completed in the same period in 2023,” Deputy Barrett said.
“It beggars belief that, despite the scale and devastating impacts of the housing crisis, the number of new homes built in 2024 is lower than the number built last year.”
Catherine Kenny, CEO of Dublin Simon Community, said, “The lack of an integrated response by the Government is one of, if not the key issue with today’s record numbers.
“Since the Dáil was last dissolved in 2020, homelessness has increased by 41%.”
Following the confirmation of a general election in 2024, Dublin Simon Community has called on the next Government to make the crisis its highest priority.
“While there is no silver bullet, a future Government needs to deliver a real integrated response. This must be a combined effort across Government departments, in areas including health, equality, social protection and others.
“Recommendations from the Housing Commission report, revised targets on housing delivery and recent recommendations by the Dublin City Taskforce should be debated as to their merits and possibilities,” said Ms Kenny.
Deputy Barrett said that he would like to see the Apple Tax windfall leveraged to ease the crisis.
“The Apple Tax should be used to capitalise a state construction company to directly build the tens of thousands of social and affordable homes we need.
“We need real rent controls to cut rents; we need a return of the ban on no-fault evictions and we need to ban vulture funds and corporate investors from owning homes.
“Only a radical housing programme of this nature can end the housing crisis and the havoc it is inflicting on so many lives.”
