The Leaders of the party groupings on Dublin City Council will meet with the Environment Minister Alan Kelly at Leinster House this afternoon to discuss the funding emergency for homeless services in the city.
It follows repeated demands from the Fianna Fáil Leader on the Council, Paul McAuliffe, since it emerged two months ago that Dublin City Council was being left with a €18.5m funding deficit for homeless services this year.
According to Councillor McAuliffe, the shortfall means that within the next few weeks, the council will run out of money for emergency accommodation and homeless families will be kicked out on the streets.
“I am delighted that the Minister has finally responded to our multiple requests for a meeting since news of this extremely serious funding crisis emerged. There has effectively been a communications blackout between the council that administers homeless services and the Minister who funds these services for the past few weeks. This has made an already bad situation worse, with the numbers of people falling homeless in the city increasing every single week and a number of very grave cases emerging where families have been forced to sleep on the streets.
“Today we need to set aside our differences, put our heads together and come up with a comprehensive plan to address the black hole in funding for homeless services in Dublin. We also need to come up with a comprehensive and realistic plan to increase the social housing stock and speed up the availability of safe, responsible housing developments for people who are in desperate need of a home.
“I will be making a direct appeal to the Minister to start taking a leadership role in resolving the unprecedented homelessness and housing crisis in Dublin and across the country. All the empty promises and media spin must be replaced by a willingness to take real action that will resolve this crisis.”