Homelessness figures today shattered another grim record while local authorities are failing to spend their social housing budgets, according to Social Democrats TD Cian O\u2019Callaghan.<\/p>\n
Deputy O\u2019Callaghan, who is the party\u2019s housing spokesperson, said:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe latest figures show there are now 13,179 people living in homeless emergency accommodation \u2013 tragically, 3,991 of these are children. This is the highest number ever recorded in the history of the State.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2019, when the number of people living in homeless accommodation surpassed 10,000, Darragh O\u2019Brien \u2013 in his role as opposition housing spokesperson \u2013 decried that another record had been shattered by the Fine Gael Government.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe went on to state that \u2018this cannot continue\u2019 and outlined how Fianna F\u00e1il would fix the housing crisis.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are now more than three years into his term as Minister for Housing and the number of people living in emergency accommodation has grown by 52 per cent. Shamefully, the number of children growing up without a home has increased by a staggering 50 per cent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a monumental failure that brings with it devastating consequences. We urgently need more social homes to protect children from the trauma of growing up homeless.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis week, the Department of Housing published their Supplementary Estimates for 2023. It showed that \u20ac220 million allocated for new local authority housing will not be spent this year. Last year, \u20ac237 million allocated to build new local authority housing was left unspent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis failure to spend money allocated for social housing is having a direct impact on the increasing amounts of people becoming homeless.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Minister for Housing needs to explain why he is repeatedly failing to ensure that these budgets are spent where they are urgently needed.\u201d<\/p>\n
November 24, 2023<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Homelessness figures today shattered another grim record while local authorities are failing to spend their social housing budgets, according to Social Democrats TD Cian O\u2019Callaghan. Deputy O\u2019Callaghan, who is the party\u2019s housing spokesperson, said: \u201cThe latest figures show there are now 13,179 people living in homeless emergency accommodation \u2013 tragically, 3,991 of these are children. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2065,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[278,10,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cian-ocallaghan","category-housing-crisis","category-press-release"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n