THIS August 309 people were homeless in Limerick, which was up from 297 the previous month.
In the Mid-West there are now 74 families with 147 children without a home which indicates that an additional 67 children became homeless in just one month.
According to Limerick Sinn Féin TD Maurice Quinlivan, the latest figures indicate that Fine Gael has lost control of the homelessness crisis.
“This government has abjectly failed to solve the homelessness crisis. Yet again the latest homelessness figures show an increase in the number of homeless people nationally and in Limerick,” said Deputy Quinlivan.
“In August, 309 people were homeless in Limerick, up from 297 the previous month. In the Mid-West there are now 74 families with 147 children without a home. That is an additional 67 children homeless in just one month,” he explained.
Deputy Quinlivan considers the increase of over 83 per cent in child homelessness in the Mid-West region as “disgraceful”.
“We must also remember that behind every statistic there is a person. Nationally there was over 3,000 children in August without a permanent home as they prepare to go back to school. This is extremely worrying and it is clear all the government’s summits and plans are not doing anything to help homeless families and children.
“Unless the Minster is prepared to adopt the measures necessary to keep more families in their homes, such as more protection for tenants in buy-to let properties, then the figures will just keep on rising,” he warned.
This week Sinn Féin put down a motion on housing calling on the government to make a number of policy changes, including substantially increasing the stock of social houses owned by local authorities and introducing a new affordable housing programme in 2018 to enable middle income households to access private rental and private purchase housing at affordable prices.
“Fine Gael chose not to vote in favour of this. If Fine Gael members put as much time into solving this crisis as they do in preparing their scripts to attack Sinn Féin, these numbers would be falling,” Quinlivan concluded.
by Alan Jacques
