Charities call on next government to introduce long-term plan to end homelessness

Last week, the Department of Housing released figures to show that more than 15,000 people in Ireland were accessing emergency accommodation at the end of November.

The next Government must implement a durable, collaborative plan to end homelessness, NGOs have urged, while a new short-term ban on evictions would not fix the problems in the long term.

“I think there’s a strong consensus across organisations that another short-term measure would not be constructive as it just has the effect of pissing off landlords even further, making more of them want to leave without providing additional security for tenants,” said Mike Allen, director of advocacy with Focus Ireland.

“What’s required is a long-term plan.” 

On Tuesday, a group of charities, including Focus Ireland, Threshold, and the Irish Refugee Council, made what they referred to as a rare joint call to the next Government on what it should do to tackle the ever-worsening problem of homelessness in Ireland.

Last week, the Department of Housing released figures to show that more than 15,000 people in Ireland were accessing emergency accommodation at the end of November. This is the highest figure ever recorded, and month-by-month new record numbers had been reached in 2024.

Charities hit out at the absence of homelessness being a key issue in Programme for Government negotiations despite the worsening crisis, as they called for a greater emphasis to be placed on addressing the problem in coalition formation talks.

Mr Allen stressed that collaborative structures across the different agencies and charities working in the sector was essential to help tackle the problem.

Recommendations

Among the 10 recommendations the group made was prioritising measures that prevent people entering homelessness, boosting housing supply, a strategy for the private rental sector, and ensuring that nobody has to sleep rough regardless of their legal status.

Mr Allen said that ending homelessness wasn’t simply a matter of increasing housing supply.

“There’s increasing evidence that simply fixing the housing system won’t have a huge effect on current level of homelessness,” he said, adding a system should be devised to ensure that those who are long-term homeless are allocated social housing.

“If the next Government fails to devise such a scheme, it will continue to fail on homelessness even if it succeeds on housing,” he said.

Both Mr Allen and Nick Henderson, CEO of the Irish Refugee Council, also hit out at Taoiseach Simon Harris for comments he made linking immigration figures and increased levels of homelessness in Ireland.

In September, Mr Harris had told The Sunday Times: “People understand the fact that homelessness numbers are heavily impacted by the fact we are seeing many people seek protection in our country, seek asylum in our country.” 

He later pointed to figures from the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive from the month of July as an example showing the numbers of people exiting Direct Provision and entering emergency accommodation.

Mr Henderson said the Taoiseach's remarks were “at best, clumsy” and at worst, “extremely problematic”.

Mr Allen said Mr Harris’s statement came “out of a very long tradition of people making statements which essentially come down to ‘homelessness is caused by the people who are experiencing it’”.

“It’s sort of blaming the people who are experiencing it, that it’s something to do with their nature that has made them homeless and he was applying that long-running idea to migrants to the country which I think is very damaging and dangerous in countless ways as well as being untrue,” he said.

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Separately, Adam Boyle, solicitor with the Mercy Law Resource Centre, said there was a lack of consistency and transparency in decisions made by local authorities when people present as homeless or apply for social housing.

He said that local authorities sometimes refuse genuine claims, which can be in a discriminatory fashion, which force people into couch surfing or rough sleeping.

“It’s deeply concerning that local authority staff make these decisions that reflect a serious lack of adequate training and their requirements under the law,” he said.