Recent figures show that nearly 5,000 children are currently homeless in Ireland, reports Breaking News.
Homelessness has climbed to a new all-time high, with statistics indicating that 15,747 individuals are now in emergency accommodation.
The latest data reveals that, during the final week of May, 10,903 adults and 4,844 children were using emergency accommodation services, reports Breaking News.
This represents an increase from April’s total of 15,418 people, which included 4,675 children.
These statistics do not account for rough sleepers, individuals couch-surfing, or those homeless in hospitals, prisons, domestic violence shelters, or asylum seeker accommodation, reports Breaking News.
In Dublin alone, the number of people in emergency housing was 11,323, with 3,539 of them being children.
Focus Ireland CEO Pat Dennigan criticised the current strategy, saying the figures highlight how the Government’s “current approach to homelessness is failing”.
“There needs to be far more urgency in the Government’s response to help end this terrible human crisis,” he added, reports Breaking News.
Ber Grogan, executive director of the Simon Communities of Ireland, stated: “We haven’t seen a decrease in homeless figures for five months – and the last drop was due to temporary seasonal relief over Christmas.
“This is not progress. We don’t want to keep breaking these records,” reports Breaking News.
“Behind every number is a person – a family, a child, a life in crisis. The time to act is now.”
Eoin Ó Broin, Sinn Féin’s housing spokesperson, pointed to a dramatic increase in child homelessness over the past decade, reports Breaking News.
“One of the most depressing parts of the report is the increase in the number of children forced to live, in many cases for long periods of time, in emergency accommodation,” Mr O Broin said, reports Breaking News.
“When this family and in particular, child homeless, crisis really started escalating it was in 2014, there were 880 children in emergency accommodation. There is now almost 5,000 children [in emergency accommodation],” reports Breaking News.
“That is a 450 per cent increase, thousands upon thousands of children have been forced into emergency accommodation because of bad Government housing policy,” reports Breaking News.
Labour TD Conor Sheehan strongly criticised the Government’s handling of the issue, accusing it of making homelessness seem acceptable.
“As true as night follows days, another level of record homelessness. This is a stain on Government, a stain that they are ignoring, that they have continuously ignored,” he added, reports Breaking News.
“This is a Government who has normalised homelessness and this is a Government who has almost made child homelessness acceptable.
“A child who enters homelessness is more likely to have poorer outcomes across every metric for the rest of their life, poor outcomes when it comes to educational attainment and poor outcomes in making them quite likely to enter homelessness as an adult,” reports Breaking News.
Rory Hearne, the Social Democrats’ housing spokesperson, described the situation as “deeply upsetting and shocking”, as homelessness nears 16,000 people nationwide.
He proposed that the state should compensate children who have experienced emergency housing.
He added: “There are now 4,844 children homeless in this state. This is a national scandal,” reports Breaking News.
“Figures released to me by the Dublin Region Homeless Executive shows that in Dublin alone, almost 17,000 children have been through emergency accommodation since 2016,” reports Breaking News.
“That is unacceptable. We are talking about, potentially, a state redress scheme for children who have been through emergency accommodation because it is absolutely preventable and the state has known since early on in the crisis. The state knows any lengthy time is deeply damaging for children,” reports Breaking News.
Mr Hearne added: “There’s also real concern that with the Government’s new rental measures, which are due to come in in March, that between now and March we’re going to see evictions, an increase in evictions by landlords to get a vacant property so they can increase the rents to market rent from March onwards, but also to get in evictions before those changes come in place. We’re calling on the government to immediately implement a no fault evictions ban across the board,” reports Breaking News.
Tell us your thoughts in the Facebook post and share this with your friends.
