16,000 could be homeless by next election claims McVerry

16,000 people could be homeless by the next general election, Father Peter McVerry has warned.

The next election, which is due to take place before February 2025, could see homeless figures increase by over 20% from where they stand now.

The advocate for homeless services said that the only way the growing crisis of homelessness was when there is a Minister for Housing who is “angry enough to bang heads together and get things done.”

Currently, there are more than 12,800 people in emergency accommodation, with the latest figures due to be released this Friday.

Homeless figures have reached record levels in recent months in Ireland, with each update from the Department of Housing breaking the record set by the previous month.

Father McVerry said an additional 200 to 250 were becoming homeless each month, and has attributed the lifting of the ban of no-fault evictions as a major factor in the rise of homelessness in Ireland.

Father McVerry was speaking at an event held by People Before Profit, who will propose re-introducing the temporary eviction ban in the Dáil this week.

TD Richard Boyd Barrett said that “emergency action” was required by Government to “stem the tide of homelessness.”

The party will use its private members’ time this week to try and speed up the passage of its Eviction Ban Bill.

Boyd Barrett said the fact that nearly 4,000 children were homeless in Ireland was a “shameful statistic” for a country that purports to be “one of the wealthiest in the world.”

Sinn Féin TD housing spokesperson, Eoin Ó’Broin, said the latest statistics published by the Department of Housing – which show 1,401 newly-built social houses in the first six months of 2023 – were “appalingly low”.

He said “the reason why more and more young people have been forced to live at home in their 20s and 30s is because the government are failing to deliver affordable homes,” he told RTÉ.