Government housing failings have been shown up yet again by the Fr Peter McVerry Trust after it announced it had increased its provisions for the homeless by 40 per cent last year.
At the same time, Minister for Housing, Eoghan Murphy, looks on as the numbers of homeless in emergency accommodation stays static at 10,000 night after night.
And even more shocking is the fact that 4,000 of these are children that have no place to call home when they come home from school every day.
This contrasts sharply with the brilliant work being done by the staff and volunteers of the McVerry Trust which boosted its housing stock to 400 last year, a 4% increase.
Jesuit priest Fr McVerry has been one of the most hard-working people in the country working to try and ease the homelessness crisis.
He has also at times been one of the most vociferous critics in the country of the Government’s sad efforts to tackle the crisis.
But the charity simply showed through its report on Monday that they are getting results.
CEO, Pat Doyle, said: “For the past number of years we have been focused on growing our housing stock to provide more pathways out of homelessness.
“We are committed to the Housing First model and housing-led response to homelessness but the only way we can ensure that we can deliver on those approaches is if we are constantly increasing our housing stock so more people can leave homelessness behind for good.”
“While we grew our residential units to almost 400 residential units across the country in 2018, we still need to secure significant increases in housing delivery this year and next to help those in need.
“We expect that we will now significantly exceed our target of 450 units by the end of 2020 which was set in our strategic plan back in 2016.”
Mr Doyle added: “Once we house people we are really effective at keeping them there.”
Peter McVerry Trust was established in 1983 and marked 35 years responding to the needs of those on the margins of Irish society in 2018. It provides a wide range of services across prevention, housing, homelessness, U-18s residential services and drug treatment services.
Meanwhile, the latest project from McVerry Trust will be unveiled by Junior Minister for Housing, Damien English, in Dublin on Tuesday afternoon.
Peter McVerry Trust will turn the sod on the charity’s first new build apartment scheme at at New Street South in Dublin 8.
The scheme of eight apartments will be used to house people who are currently accessing homeless services in Dublin City.
The derelict site on which the apartments are to be built has been transferred by Dublin City Council to the charity in order to deliver the social housing scheme.
The construction works are funded by the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government under Rebuilding Ireland.
