220 extra hotel and apartment beds have been secured for homeless people in Dublin who need to isolate during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nine homeless people in the capital have contracted coronavirus, while over 50 are currently in isolation.
The beds have been secured by the Peter McVerry Trust in collaboration with the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE).
Trust CEO Pat Doyle hopes to get everyone who needs to cocoon into their own space by Monday to give them "the best chance" of surviving the outbreak.
"We have 51 people isolating, we have nine confirmed cases, we have about another 10 people moving today into isolation," Doyle said.
"What we hope to do by Monday then is to pick up everybody else who needs to cocoon, tested or not, and get them into their own individual ensuite room, so that we can give them the best chance."
The new rooms bring the total number of beds available to 660, and Doyle says the highest risk individuals will get them first.
“We immediately in our preparations targeted about 160 individuals who we felt had complex health issues," he told Newstalk this morning.
“If you've been on the street for 15 years, maybe your health hasn't been the priority.
“A lot of homeless people would have complex health issues - we'd have a lot of people that would have had addiction issues over the years and their health would have been affected by that.
“We've been preparing well - I suppose we've had an extra week or two, it's moved slower nationally than we expected. And it's moved slower within our population. "
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