Minister for Housing should “hang his head in shame” over homeless crisis says Sinn Féin

Over 5,000 children are in homeless accommodation in Ireland for the first time, while the nationwide figure has hit the 16,000 mark.

The grim statistics, released by the Department of Housing, showed that there are 1,648 families availing of homeless services in Dublin, and 3,719 children in Dublin are homeless.

In the Dublin area as a whole, there are over 11,000 people are homeless, or enough to fill Tallaght Stadium.

The homeless crisis has plagued the last few governments; in 2018, then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar declared the crisis was an “emergency” when figures were sitting below 10,000 nationwide.

When Varadkar made those comments, there were 1,329 families availing of homeless services in Dublin and that the homeless crisis was “heading in the wrong direction.”

The figures for July 2025 reveal that the crisis has now gotten away from the government. 

After the lifting of the no-fault eviction ban in March 2023, homeless figures, which had seen a sharp decline during that temporary measure, started to see a steady rise again and leading to the situation in 2025 where the all-time record high figures have been broken in consecutive months.

Sinn Féin TD and housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin said that the record homeless figures are down to the government’s abandonment of the Tenant-In-Situ scheme.

Statistics from Ó Broin showed that from April to June this year, just 122 Tenant-In-Situ acquisitions were made by the Department of Housing.

In the same time period in 2024, 349 acquisitions were made under the scheme, which has now been cut extensively by the new Minister for Housing, James Browne and his seeming reluctance to fund local authorities to continue the scheme.

Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council have pleaded with Minister Browne to reinstate funding for the tenant-in-situ scheme, but to no avail.

Ó Broin says the Minister cutting back on the tenant-in-situ scheme is a direct cause of the record homeless figures, and Ó Broin’s Sinn Féin colleague Daithí Doolan said that the Minister should “hang his head in shame” over the figures.

“The collapse in Tenant-In-Situ acquisitions is driving the rise in homelessness. When James Browne took the reckless decision to slash funding for this scheme and introduce unnecessary restrictions, we warned that it would lead to an increase in homelessness; now the evidence from the Department of Housing confirms that this is the case,” Ó Broin said.

Ber Grogan, Executive Director of the Simon Communities of Ireland, said, “there are over 5,000 children whose lives are being impacted by trauma. Who cares? The Simon Communities of Ireland cares, and we are calling on the government, policymakers, landlords, – all of the key stakeholders to show they care too.”

Grogan said, “Ireland is a wealthy country with thousands of vacant homes. Ireland’s largest private landlord, Irish Residential Properties REIT (I-RES), reported profits of €16.3 million in the first half of 2025.”

“This rise in corporate landlord profits highlights the stark imbalance between housing as a source of profit and the worsening human cost of homelessness. We cannot continue with business as usual while homelessness keeps rising. The time for action is now.”