Charity calls on Government to prioritise homelessness issue

THE PROBLEM of homelessness in the Republic could be solved if there was as much political will for the matter as there was for…

THE PROBLEM of homelessness in the Republic could be solved if there was as much political will for the matter as there was for sorting out the banking sector, Focus Ireland said yesterday.

The charity that provides accommodation for homeless people yesterday called on the Government to make providing homes for those most in need an immediate priority.

In its 2009 annual report published yesterday, the organisation warned that the State would fail to meet its target of ending long-term homelessness by the end of 2010.

The charity warned that the lack of effective action on this issue could see a deepening housing and homeless crisis develop.

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“The Government has supported the building of 250,000 homes during the Celtic Tiger years and yet we have over 100,000 people on the housing list and we have 5,000 people who are homeless,” said Joyce Loughnan, the chief executive of Focus Ireland.

“So why isn’t there a resource of political will to keep people in their homes and house people who are homeless?” she asked.

Focus Ireland, which has provided 1,200 households to secure a home since 2005, did however acknowledge that good work has been done by Minister for Housing Michael Finneran in dealing with short-term support.

However, it added that more needed to be done to help those affected move on from being homeless to being housed.

“The Government needs to show it has a will to sort this out. There is a will to sort out the banks and billions have been found to undertake that.

“If a similar will existed, we could sort out homelessness in this country,” Ms Loughnan said.

Figures contained in the report show that 100,000 households are on local authority social housing waiting lists across the State.

About 93,000 households are in receipt of rent supplements, while the funds raised for Focus Ireland fell from €5.7 million in 2008 to €5.3 million in 2009.

Fintan O'Toole, assistant editor of The Irish Times, who launched the report said the current level of housing need and homelessness was now worse than it was at the end of the last recession.

“The decision to use all the resources we can scrape together for the banks is also a decision not to do many other things, among them making any real change to an Ireland that is deeply divided between those who make decisions and those who take the consequences,” he said.

Twenty-five-year-old “Emma”, a mother of two children, recently benefited from housing provision made possible by Focus Ireland. She said that her life had been turned upside down and all for the better.

“The help I got from Focus was fantastic. I don’t know myself now. Now I’m on my own and I can’t get over it. I’m really excited,” she said.