Extra emergency beds for rough sleepers

Extra emergency beds have been rolled out for rough sleepers as temperatures begin to plummet, the Housing Minister has confirmed.

Eoghan Murphy is due to meet with local authorities this week to ensure that enough temporary beds for the homeless are provided in the coming months.

Mr Murphy has defended changes to how the numbers in emergency accommodation are counted, insisting that they should have not been initially classified as homeless.

Opposition parties have accused him of massaging homeless figures after 1,606 people, including 981 children, were removed from the figures since March. But Mr Murphy said he had asked local authorities to “use whatever measures they needed” to solve the crisis.

“It became apparent to me that local authorities were using Section 10 funding, which is used for homelessness supports, to actually make sure that families weren’t in emergency accommodation but were in homes.”

He said because the money was coming from Section 10 funding, these families were being recorded as homeless despite having “their own homes with their own doors”.

Mr Murphy said that in some cases the local authority is the landlord and so families are in more secure accommodation than a privately rented house.

“It is wrong to record those people as being in emergency accommodation when they are not,” said Mr Murphy.

He said the number of rough sleepers declined by around 40% last winter but that a lot more work is required.

“We are entering into the winter season. We are going to see a lot more storms as we saw in the last year. In many cases we were running our winter initiative on a 24/7 basis.

“We have already had to implement it over the course of this weekend because there has been a more immediate drop in temperature.”

He said more emergency beds will be rolled out in the coming weeks.