Focus Ireland, the charity that provides accommodation for homeless people, has called on the Government to make the provision of homes for those most in need, as an immediate priority.
In its annual report for 2009, which was published today, the organisation warned that the State will 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.
“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,” chief executive Joyce Loughnan said.
“So why isn’t there a resource of political will to keep people in their homes and house people that are homeless?”
Focus Ireland which has provided 1,200 households to secure a home since 2005, acknowledged that good work has been done by Minister for Housing Michael Finneran in dealing with short-term support. However, it said more needs to be done in order to help those effected move on from being just homeless to being housed.
It said the Government would fail to meet its own target of ending long-term homelessness, which meant no person living in emergency accommodation for longer than six months, by the end of the year.
“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.
The report said there are up to 5,000 people homeless in Ireland at any one time, and almost 100,000 households on local authority social housing waiting lists. Some 93,000 households are in receipt of rent supplements.
Focus Ireland founder Sr Stanislaus Kennedy said a dramatic increase in housing need had taken place at a time when we have been building more houses than ever before.
“How can it be that Ireland managed to build in the region of 250,000 homes that were not needed during the boom years yet we have still failed to provide enough homes for those who need them most?
“The housing is there and the support mechanisms are there. The question many of us are asking is whether there is sufficient political will across the whole of Government to ensure that whatever obstacles remain in place are removed," Sr Stanislaus said.
“How can the Government secure over €50 billion to bail out the banks but at the same time not be able to tackle the homeless and housing issues?”
Assistant editor of The Irish Times Fintan O'Toole, who launched the report, said the current level of housing need and homelessness is 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.
Speaking at the launch, Emma (25) a mother of two children, said she recently benefitted from housing provision made possible by Focus Ireland.
"I was in emergency accommodation for 13, 14 months and had to share a house that was bad. It was very strict and I was isolated but now I can do what I want to do. I have a big back garden, I can't believe it," she said.
"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."
Focus Ireland said it was providing “a place to call home” for 650 households across Dublin, Limerick, Waterford, Cork and Sligo. It said it managed to raise €5.34 million from donations, corporate support and fundraising events last year, which represented a drop from the €5.7 million raised in 2008.
Focus Ireland also provided over 3,000 meals a month for people at their coffee shop and information centre in Temple Bar in Dublin.