€1m per week bill to shelter homeless in Dublin

Dublin City Council is paying hotels, hostels and other emergency accommodation providers almost €1m a week to shelter the spiralling numbers of homeless in the capital.

New figures from the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive (DRHE) show the spend on emergency accommodation for the homeless totalled €34.85m for the nine months to the end of September.

The average weekly spend on emergency accommodation is just over €968,000. The figures also show that €26.6m has been paid to hotels in the nine months to the end of September — around €740,000 a week — outstripping the 2015 total by €10m.