Simon says it cannot take further funding cuts

The country’s largest homeless charity has warned the sector can not take any further funding cuts in the upcoming budget.

Simon Communities say cuts signalled by the Department of the Environment in last year’s budget turned out to be far worse than expected. While a central budget cut of 3.3% to homeless services was announced, the charity says when filtered down to local level, this turned out to be as high as 12% in the Midlands, 8% in Cork, and 7% elsewhere.

Head of policy Niamh Randall said the problem was exacerbated by the fact that charities were only being notified of the scale of the regional cuts now.