Captions reads:

“The Guards – Beggars Bush – Irish Republican Army – February – 4th 1922 – The men who fought for the freedom of Ireland (the first unit of IRA in uniform)”.

The Guards at Beggar’s Bush (UCD Digital Library)

This morning.

New Road, Clondalkin, County Dublin

Pre-2011 pay-scale teacher Neasa Moloney (top left) supporting her colleague, lower tier post-2011 pay scale teacher Sarah Kelly outside Colaiste Bride School on a day of action across Ireland by members of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) over unequal pay.

It’s heartbreaking.

Everyone’s in tiers.

No school for thousands of students as TUI strikes over equal pay (RTÉ)

Sam Boal/Rollingnews

Anyone?

From top: Eoghan Murphy and Richard Bruton (head down) at the Fine Gael General Election 2020 manifesto launch; tweet from Inner City Helping Homeless

Last week

The Department of Housing released its latest homeless figures which showed there were 9,731 people (6,309 adults and 3,422 children) living in emergency accommodation in the final week of December 2019.

This represented a decrease of 387 adults and a decrease of 330 children compared to the figures for November 2019 when there were 10,448 people (6,696 adults and 3,752 children) living in emergency accommodation in the final week of November 2019.

However…

…homeless charity Inner City Helping Homeless (ICHH)have been questioning the figures, last night writing:

“Last week the Department of Housing released the homeless report for December 2019 alongside their report for the fourth quarter of 2019.

The report stated a reduction of 717 people from the report for November 2019.

Upon further inspection we noticed a huge difference in the number of people listed as being in a TEA (Temporary Emergency Accommodation), an accommodation type with “No (or minimal) supports on site”.

The increase in this particular section was 3,146% [from 64 in Dublin in November to 2,250 in December]  We were quick to highlight this on our social media platforms as it didn’t add up alongside the number of people that were removed in the space of one month.’

They added:

‘Upon further investigation on both the Department’s website and the Rebuild Ireland website, we noticed that the report had actually been updated due to miscalculation however this update was never communicated to either homeless charities nor the media based on the feedback we have received.

What is clear from our investigation was that the first report was an error due to invalid data entry.

On the first report the figures under PEA/STA were the total of people in PEA’s so should have been added together.

Instead they were put in incorrect columns and not added which explained the increase of 3,146% in the TEA column however with a general election a week away this wasn’t communicated to anyone.

A deeper comparison of the fourth quarter report versus the December report doesn’t show how it could be possible that 717 fewer people were homeless in December vs the November report.

“Using Dublin as an example the December report stated there were 94 less families homeless in Dublin. When we look at the quarterly report from the department it shows the number of families entering homelessness each month versus the number of families exiting homelessness.

According to their own report 44 new families became homeless in December while 98 families exited homelessness which is a difference of 54 families not 94.

This has raised alarm bells with regards to the entire report as the last time we saw a decline like this the Department had reclassified 1,606 people and removed them from the homeless list despite some councils stating they disagreed with the decision.

We have submitted a Freedom of Information request to clarify both how so many people exited emergency accommodation in December and why the errors in the original published report was not communicated correctly.’

Anyone?

Inner City Helping Homeless

 

This morning.

Anyone?

Broadsheet.ie