Charity calls on hotels and Airbnbs to offer spaces to homeless people

The Simon Community is calling on hotels and Airbnb hosts to offer their spaces to local authorities for homeless people that may have to self-isolate.

The charity says some emergency accommodation has communal areas, which will not be safe when the surge in cases of Covid-19 comes in the next couple of weeks

Wayne Stanley, head of policy with the Simon Community, says there is space to be used in the state now.

"Some of our accommodation people might have their own room and may even have an en-suite but still, cooking facilities, eating their meals, it's all shared," he said.

"We would prefer to use congregated settings where you have a number of people sharing a building or sharing areas of a building.

"What we're looking for, at least in the short term, to get people out of those settings, to get them into, as I say, any spare capacity that's now there because people aren't staying in hotels, Airbnbs are not being used anymore."

Meanwhile, the Irish Hotels Federation is calling for all commercial rates to be waived during the coronavirus crisis.

The group says proposals to simply defer them are completely inadequate.

The federation says 260,000 people work in Irish tourism, and every day without a waiver leads to further job losses.

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