400% rise in number of homeless attending A&Es

There has been a four-fold increase in people admitted to hospital emergency departments who classed themselves as “homeless”, research published in the Irish Medical Journal shows.

Dr Anne O’Farrell of the HSE’s Health Intelligence Unit led a team, including a representative of homeless charity Focus Ireland, which looked into in-patient admissions to acute hospitals for people of “no fixed abode” between 2005 and 2014.

Over the study period there were 2,051 in-patient emergency admissions for people in that category. There was a 406% increase between 2005 (78 cases) and 2014 (395 cases). The research also highlighted the extent to which the homeless level is concentrated in the capital — 370 of the 395 cases in 2014 were admissions to Dublin hospitals.