Limerick homelessness
Deputy Quinlivan said homelessness in Limerick was at crisis point, with no emergency beds and many people rough sleeping. The Tánaiste replied that major funding had been allocated for homeless services and Housing First, and said preventions and exits were increasing despite population growth.
The issue of homelessness in Limerick has never been so bad. There is a complete absence of available emergency accommodation for those who desperately need it. Homeless service providers have spoken to me, as they do on a regular basis, to say there simply are not nearly enough beds available in the city. On any given evening, there can be up to 70 people sleeping rough. This part of Limerick has no emergency accommodation available for them. The monthly Department of housing figures, although an incomplete measure of total homelessness, show that there were 200 children where the State provided emergency accommodation in the mid-west alone. This is a stark and tragic number of young children impacted by the housing crisis. I have been raising this issue of lack of services and spaces in Limerick for a number of years and it only gets worse. Does the Tánaiste agree that his Government's policy on housing continues to fail tens of thousands of people every single day and will he instruct the Minister to provide additional emergency accommodation in Limerick?
Comment on this
The Minister is doing that. Some €303 million has been made available for delivery of homeless services in 2025. That is money going to local authorities, including Limerick, so they can provide emergency accommodation, homeless prevention tenancies and sustainable services. There have been very significant increases in funding for the housing first initiative-----
Comment on this
-----where most of the homeless non-governmental bodies came to us to ask whether the Government could fund housing first significantly. The Government did that and we certainly work on providing services for prevention and then to enable people to exit homelessness-----
Comment on this
We have doubled the numbers since three years ago. How can that be working?
Comment on this
-----in 2023. That is a 25% increase on the 5,478 adult prevention and exits achieved in 2022. Huge resources are going into the area and that there are more and more people, with the growth of the population, and so forth. It is complicated-----