Kenny: ‘Tea and sympathy takes nobody off the streets’

Enda Kenny has said his experience of meeting and listening to rough sleepers on Dublin’s streets was a "revelation", but that tea and sympathy will not solve the homeless crisis.

Mr Kenny spent more than three hours on Dublin’s streets on Thursday night speaking to rough sleepers and helping a charity working with the homeless.

Giving out soup and emergency supplies alongside volunteers with the Inner City Helping Homeless, he walked the streets and listened to the plight of men and women sleeping in doorways and laneways.

The charity’s director Anthony Flynn said: “He walked the streets like a normal Joe Soap, interacting with our volunteers and those people we came across. He was picking up the soup flasks and pumping tea and engaged with everybody’s story about why they were on the streets and why there was no access to beds.”

Mr Kenny joined volunteers at 11pm on Thursday on Stephens Green in Dublin’s city centre as they moved down Grafton Street, Temple Bar and George’s Street and finished up before 2am.

The group was set up last year in response to the murder of a homeless man who burnt to death in his sleeping bag in Phoenix Park. Volunteers with the group help 150 people a night sleeping rough in Dublin.

According to Mr Flynn, Mr Kenny also took the contact details of one man sleeping rough in Temple Bar so as to follow up on his situation.

“The people he came across, he wanted to fix the problem. Some had drug addiction, alcohol addiction, mental health problems and others were victims of the economic crisis,” added the charity’s director.

Mr Flynn also said Mr Kenny had said he would look at conducting a value-for-money review of how tens of millions of euro in funds are spent addressing homelessness.

Mr Kenny said: “What I saw last night was a revelation.” He said some people’s complications were “very difficult”, adding, “Sleeping amidst a mass of needles in the gutter in 2014 is something that we cannot condone, that we should be ashamed of.”

He also said that “tea and sympathy takes nobody off the streets”.

The Taoiseach was joined on the streets by lord mayor Christy Burke who explained that the event had been arranged weeks ago.

“A lot of the sleepers recognised him even though he had a woolly hat on. His security team were dressed the same as us, and you would think a lot of people thought they were part of the volunteers,” he said.

The Government hosted an emergency summit on homelessness this week where it was pledged that all homeless people on Dublin’s streets would be housed before Christmas and that the problem would be eradicated by 2016.

The summit was held in the wake of the death of Jonathan Corrie who died outside Leinster House.