Tag Archives: cold weather initiative

Yesterday.

In the Dáil.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald told Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy that information from the homeless charity Inner City Helping Homeless indicated that there were no emergency beds available for 86 homeless people by 11.30pm on Tuesday night and they subsequently slept rough.

Mr Murphy responded by saying “no one will be turned away” from a bed as the cold weather initiative is under way – despite Ms McDonald having just told him that 86 people had slept rough.

The figure was disputed by Director of the Dublin Region Homeless Executive Eileen Gleeson last night.

Meanwhile, today…

Anthony Flynn, of Inner City Helping Homeless, tweetz:

With the continuous talk of beds for anyone who’s wants them the number of people sleeping rough last night rose. 77 men & 15 women a total of 92 people forced to sleeping in freezing tempatures. This is completely unacceptable the Minister must today respond!

Anyone?

Meanwhile…

Yesterday: “No One Will Be Turned Away”

Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy

This afternoon.

In the Dáil.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald recalled the Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy saying yesterday that, because of the “cold snap” and the current cold weather initiative being in place, there’s an emergency bed available for everyone who needs one.

She then went on to say Inner City Helping Homeless outreach volunteers found there were no beds available for 86 homeless people in Dublin last night at 11.30pm and they subsequently slept rough.

She added:

“Not alone that but people have contacted my office this morning say that those who were in hostels last night were turfed out first thing this morning, into the cold, and are now sitting around, in tents, near Heuston Station.”

Mr Murphy responded:

“I think we do have to be careful, addressing this situation at the moment with the cold weather initiative, that is in place, that we make sure that the information that we are getting is accurate.

“We work with a number of NGO partner organisations to make sure that in these types of events, when there is severe cold weather, that outreach group teams from all of the organisations are out and working with the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive to get people into safe, secure accommodation.

“Over the course of the last number of months, we’ve been putting in place an additional 200 permanent new beds into the system, plus 150 emergency beds as well.

“And the outreach teams are out to get people into accommodation and no one will be turned away.

“And also when we have the cold weather initiative in place, people aren’t just being turfed out onto the street. We have to be mindful of the fact thatit’s a very cold period and we have to make sure that people are being protected in that period and we do that with our partner organisations in the NGO sectors. The cold weather initiative will remain in place as we go through this cold snap…”

Anyone?

Watch Dáil proceedings live here