LAST WEEKEND, TAOISEACH Simon Harris raised eyebrows over comments he made linking record homelessness to an upsurge in people seeking asylum in Ireland.
His remarks led to accusations that the Taoiseach was deflecting blame for the housing crisis away from the Government and on to vulnerable people.
Subsequent news analysis of Harris’ words also pointed out that his remarks could not be accurate, because asylum seekers are not counted in monthly homeless statistics.
Those figures have climbed to staggering heights this year, and the number of people living in emergency accommodation in Ireland has skyrocketed since the Government took office in the middle of 2020.
The reasons behind that trend are far more complex than immigration on its own.
Experts say the lack of housing for those in long-term homelessness is not enabling the numbers to fall, while factors like landlords leaving the private rental market are playing a much bigger role in the increasing numbers of people becoming homeless.
In April, the month Harris was appointed Taoiseach, homeless figures passed 14,000 for the first time in the history of the State.
That number has increased in every month since, and figures published yesterday set a new high of 14,486 people living in emergency accommodation – the eighth consecutive month in which the record was broken.
As the head of Government going into an election, Harris was reasonably asked to explain the ongoing failure to deal with the issue despite a pledge by his Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien that tackling the problem is the Government’s top priority.
“People understand the fact that homelessness numbers are heavily impacted by the fact we are seeing many people seek protection in our country, seek asylum in our country,” he told The Sunday Times, remarks which prompted a wave of criticism.
Many were quick to point out that asylum seekers are not counted in monthly homeless figures and therefore cannot impact them.
The homeless figures, which are published by the Department of Housing on the last Friday of every month, refer to the number of adults and children who have been placed in State-funded accommodation like hotels and B&Bs on a specific week every month.
They are collated by the department based on figures provided by various charities who are funded by the department to provide emergency accommodation under Section 10 of the Housing Act 1988.
They do not include people who sleep (like those who do not sleep in homeless hostels or asylum seekers forced to sleep in tents because they have not received an offer of accommodation from international protection services) or those living in Direct Provision centres, which mainly house asylum seekers who are waiting for their claims to be processed by the Government.
The Taoiseach was lambasted by his political opponents for the inaccuracy.
Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon accused Harris of spreading “misinformation”, while People Before Profit’s Paul Murphy described the remarks as “cynical, untrue and dangerous”.
But while Harris’ comments to The Sunday Times may have been inaccurate, they did highlight a broader narrative that the Government is trying to push about homelessness.
As far back as February, Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien said he had “concerns” about people moving out of the Direct Provision system and becoming homeless.
He went further at the end of July, citing official figures to make his point.
“Last month, the highest proportion of new presentations to homeless services and emergency services was those leaving direct provision with status, and that is a newer issue that we are seeing now,” he told RTÉ’s This Week programme.
This may have been what Harris had in mind when he spoke to The Sunday Times; it was a claim he repeated on Monday when he was asked about the controversy by reporters.
“If you look at the figures, for example, for the month of July, the single biggest reason people gave for presenting at Dublin homeless services was exiting Direct Provision,” he said.
The claim refers to a July report by the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive (DRHE), which manages homeless services in the capital.
It found that 67 of the 224 single adults who became homeless that month had left the Direct Provision system, more than the number who had left their home after a relationship breakdown (51) or who had been evicted (25).
From a statistical point of view, the focus on single people exiting Direct Provision in Dublin masks the wider situation in the capital and across the country.
DRHE reports for 2024 show that there were 1,276 presentations by single adults to homeless services in Dublin between January and July.
But only around a quarter (315) of those presentations came after the person had left Direct Provision, meaning the remaining three-quarters were for reasons like family breakdowns, evictions from private tenancies, or sleeping rough.
The pattern is even more pronounced when it comes to family presentations: of the 556 occasions where families in Dublin engaged with emergency accommodation providers, just 12 did so because they left Direct Provision.
Two separate quarterly reports for the first half of 2024 also show that just four families and 24 single adults outside Dublin became homeless after exiting Direct Provision.
Harris and O’Brien’s use of the DRHE figures also fails to explain why so many people are leaving Direct Provision in the first place.
More than 40,000 people have sought international protection in Ireland since the start of 2022 – which was a record year for asylum seeker arrivals until those figures were surpassed this summer.
Those claiming asylum would normally be accommodated in the Direct Provision system, where up to 6,000 people granted refugee status were still living at the start of the year.
To make space for new arrivals, the Government has told thousands of people in Direct Provision with refugee status to find an alternative place to live since 2022.
However, independent studies have found that asylum seekers face significant challenges finding housing when they leave Direct Provision.
A report by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in July found that the main problem was a lack of social and private rental accommodation, but also pointed to the inadequacy of Government housing supports and overburdened housing services.
Others have pointed out how such problems are symptomatic of the broader housing crisis, which have existed since long before the current level of asylum seekers were arriving in Ireland.
The Mercy Law Resource Centre, a group that provides free legal advice to homeless people, noted that both refugees and Irish families who present to homeless services are ultimately facing the same problems.
“These challenges relate to a lack of affordable and social housing, which has created an overreliance on the private rental sector, contributing to vastly inflated rental costs,” the group said in a statement earlier this week.
“These have been problems in the making for over a decade, and suggesting that they are somehow a new phenomenon related to immigration is disingenuous and should be avoided.”
Official data would appear to support this point of view.
Between February 2016 and February 2020 - when the previous Fine Gael-led Government was in charge – the number of people living in emergency accommodation increased by 70% from 5,963 people to 10,148 people.
The figures are broadly the same since the last general election took place (the last month before the Covid pandemic, which caused a drop in homeless figures before the Government formed in June that year).
Up to last month, 4,338 people have become homeless since the last election, compared to 4,185 people under the previous Government.
Housing and homeless charities tend to agree that there are myriad reasons for the continued rise in the number of people entering emergency accommodation in Ireland.
The most common problem that’s highlighted is a lack of housing. Once again, that was the assessment as charities sent in their reactions to the most recent figures yesterday.
Erene Williamson of the Salvation Army said in her statement that “a chronic lack of affordable housing and the cost of living crisis” were the main reasons people accessing the charity’s services.
Wayne Stanley of the Simon Communities of Ireland likewise suggested that the Government is simply not building enough new houses.
“The solutions are there, but what we are missing is the investment in those solutions and the supply of homes that are required,” he said.
Even where houses are being constructed, there are some who argue that the Government is exacerbating the problem by not building the right type of housing to get people out of long-term homelessness.
Speaking to The Journal previously, Focus Ireland Director Mike Allen highlighted how the majority of long-term homeless people are either single adults or larger families with four or more children.
“But social housing providers are not building one-bedroom apartments [for single people] and they’re not building four-bedroom homes [for larger families]; they’re building two- and three-bedroom units,” he said.
These homes are not big enough for large families, Allen explains, but are also not allocated to single adults because they are too big for them.
“The whole housing system is not responsive to changes both in the public and private realm,” he adds.
Other groups mention the number of landlords leaving the private rental market or family breakdowns, as is borne out in data contained the Department of Housing’s own quarterly reports on homelessness.
The first two such reports for the first half of 2024 show that the two most common reasons for people becoming homeless were because they were evicted from a private rental property – largely as a result of landlords selling up – or family relationships breaking down.
Catherine Kenny of Dublin Simon told The Journal that not enough is being done to prevent people from entering homelessness in the first place.
“There’s no capacity in the system for anybody extra; the system was never built to withhold that, and what’s also a crisis to my mind is that we’re building a crisis response system, as opposed to resolving the issues,” she says.
Kenny believes that the issue is now so ingrained and that there is not the same level of “energy and focus” to address the problem as there once was.
“There’s nothing of note that’s coming through to indicate that [increased homelessness] is going to stop any time soon,” she says.
“Homelessness does end for individuals, but I just can’t see the systemic resolution coming through any time soon.”
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