People told to sleep rough due to conditions in some hostels

Homeless campaigner Fr Peter McVerry has claimed some emergency hostel provision is such a disgrace that “I have been personally advising some homeless people to sleep rough”.

Renua Ireland said Fr McVerry told its party think-in some people recovering from drug addiction were being placed in hostels “full of active addicts”.

A party spokesman said the founder of the Peter McVerry Trust said the Government’s social housing policy was deeply flawed and it was looking for a cheap way out of the housing crisis.

He said an expenditure of €2bn per annum was required over a decade to resolve the housing list and that the current social housing policy of the Coalition would leave 75,000 people still requiring housing from the rental sector in 2020.

Fr McVerry also criticised a situation where more than 54,000 buy-to-let mortgage holders were living on a knife edge and noted Government solutions to date had only resolved 100 of those problem mortgages.