Dublin City Council has been accused of turning a blind eye to a rat-infested underground hole where at least five people have lived.
The Irish Mirror revealed yesterday how a homeless man in his 30s has been sleeping in the tunnel near the Grand Canal.
And it has now emerged at least four others have lived in the dark cave – across the road from a €40million building that houses the Canadian Embassy.
Homeless activist William Cummings said: “I felt sick when I saw the story about the latest man.”
He revealed in the past two years he has engaged with four people living in the same spot.
Mr Cummings added: “There was a couple two years ago, a single 23-year-old Dublin man named Michael nine months ago and a Lithuanian man, in his 30s, six months ago.”
The campaigner was instrumental in creating the city’s first dedicated outdoor space for mental wellbeing along the Grand Canal.
He spent nearly €10,000 of his own money on the project at Wilton Terrace
He said: “I was shocked there was someone living in there when we did the artwork two years ago and it gave me many sleepless nights.
“When we finished the artwork I asked Dublin City Council if we could clean out that hole and block it up so nobody else would go into it and use it then for us to have all our tools in there.
“I had a whole idea for that area to empower people that were down on bad luck, or living in homelessness. And I was shocked when Dublin City Council told me it was nothing to do with them and they wouldn’t entertain that idea.
“I wrote to them five months ago and I actually asked two Dublin City councillors to write to [an officer] and they got the same answer back.”
A Dublin City Council statement said: “The area you refer to is well known to our teams who visit it regularly to check if people are sleeping rough in the vicinity. There is no one rough sleeping there at present.”
