One tenth of the homeless population of Ireland on one Dublin street — Gary Gannon
Kenneth Fox
One tenth of the homeless population of Ireland is in emergency accommodation on Gardiner Street in Dublin, Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon told the Dáil.
The TD said the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive has contracted 20 properties on this one street, all but one of which are privately operated.
He said that there are 1,700 emergency accommodation beds "on barely a half-kilometre stretch of road."
Speaking during a Dáil debate on Thursday, Gannon said: "Yes, I also wince at the use of the word "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.
"Eoin Murphy is the principal of Gardiner Street Primary School, where 20 per cent of the children are living in emergency homeless accommodation. He recently told RTÉ’s “Prime Time”.
Gannon said students’ basic needs are not being met a lot of the time because they might be up late at night. He said they might not have good washing facilities or cooking facilities, nowhere to play or do their homework.
"What is happening on Gardiner Street is a blight on this republic, but there is another fact I want the Tánaiste to hold in his head if he visits central Dublin over the next few weeks.
"Using all available data sources, a north city centre residents' alliance has concluded 7,000 people are living in homeless accommodation in the north inner city.
"I do not have time to talk about the level of complex needs that are being unmet in this cohort, but it is devastating to the lives of those trapped in the broken system and to the communities trying to pick up the pieces of Government failure.
"But there is an even crueller juxtaposition operating in tandem. The average monthly rent in Dublin city is €2,700 a month. Rents are 80 per cent higher than they were a decade ago. How many affordable purchase homes were delivered across the entirety of Dublin City Council’s boundaries last year? Zero. There was not a single one."
