Ten per cent of Ireland’s homeless population is being “warehoused” on one street in Dublin’s city centre, and 7,000 of the State’s 16,000 homeless people are in the capital’s north inner city, the Dáil has heard.
Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon said there were 1,700 emergency accommodation beds “on barely half a kilometre stretch of road” on Gardiner Street.
He “winced at the use of the term ‘warehoused’, but I know personally the lived experiences of families trapped in this reality, and to call it anything else would be an insult to their experience”, he said.
Raising the issue during Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil, Gannon said the North City Centre Residents’ Alliance had “concluded that there are 7,000 people living in homeless accommodation in the north inner city”.
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As the Dublin Central byelection campaign officially gets under way, he said Gardiner Street was just one street away from the GPO, where 18 months ago Tánaiste Simon Harris launched the Dublin City Task Force report on the regeneration of the north inner city and pledged dedicated resources and a brighter future.
The Dublin Central TD said this had failed for an area where, on Gardiner Street, the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive have contracted 20 properties, all but one of which were privately operated.
In Gardiner Street Primary School, 20 per cent of the children are living in emergency homeless accommodation. The principal recently told RTÉ’s Prime Time “students’ basic needs aren’t being met a lot of the time because they might be up late at night, they might not have good washing facilities or cooking facilities, nowhere to play or do their homework”.
He said: “What’s happening on Gardiner Street is a blight on this republic.”
Reporting by The Irish Times in December 2023 found that 1,170 of the 13,179 people then recorded as homeless in Ireland were living on Gardiner Street.
The average monthly rent in Dublin City is €2,700 a month, he said. “Zero” affordable purchase homes were delivered across the entirety of Dublin City Council boundaries last year, he added.
The Tánaiste said the task force report was the culmination of an “incredible body of work” and there had been real progress in its implementation.
The Government this week confirmed the appointment of Robert Watt to head a special purpose vehicle to implement the task force report. Dublin City Council “has allocated staff with the technical skills to a programme management unit to drive delivery, but they’re now working on an integrated area strategy”.
They had amended the living city initiative to make sure more homes in Dublin qualify for reliefs to bring buildings back into use – including accommodation above shops. Significant funding has been provided for Parnell Square Cultural Quarter, the fruit and vegetable market and for the GPO.
He acknowledged homelessness “in our capital city is still far, far too high”. That was why they had provided €400 million for the Dublin homeless region this year, and statutory discretion for local authorities around Housing Assistance Payments above the prescribed maximum rent limit, he said.
The Taoiseach, Tánaiste, Minister and Minister of State for Housing recently met Dublin City Council and its director of housing and chief executive “to see what more can be done” for faster housing delivery.
“I accept it is an area in which we have a huge amount more work to do,” Harris said. But “driving the implementation of the Dublin City Centre Task Force” and tackling the homelessness emergency were both important pieces of work.
Gannon said the special purposes vehicle is “undefined, unbudgeted”, while Dublin City Council has been asking for €114 million to finance some of the initiatives.
The Tánaiste told him they were looking at other possible ring-fenced funding such as a tourism levy, which he was eager to explore “on the understanding that the funding goes directly to issues in Dublin city”.
