THE HOUSING CHARITY Peter McVerry Trust has announced it will provide emergency homeless accommodation to 100 single people and 24 families in Dublin before Christmas.

The charity said that the new accommodation represents the single largest phase of new provision it has provided to date and means that it will be providing emergency accommodation to over 600 people per night in Dublin and Kildare.

The new services are located Dublin City, Fingal, and Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown and will include two new family hubs.

The charity said the new capacity would be the largest single round of additional accommodation it has ever provided. Pat Doyle, CEO of Peter McVerry Trust said the charity was doing everything it could to provide high quality emergency shelter to those in need.

“The unfortunate reality is that the number of people in homelessness continues to grow and as a result we need to secure significant increases in emergency accommodation provision.”

“The delivery of 100 extra spaces for single adults as well as new accommodation for 24 families at this time of year is an enormous challenge not only to secure the buildings but to ensure we have the staff resources to deliver the appropriate levels of support.

Thankfully we have been able to secure those resources and we are in a position to respond with a series of new services which mark the single largest response we have made in such a short period of time.

The charity says the “vast majority” of the new services will come from brand new accommodation. A small number will be delivered by expanding one of their city centre hostels to provide more emergency accommodation to single women.

In order to get families out of hotels and to prevent other families entering the hotel system we are going to provide emergency accommodation for 24 families in two new family hubs in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown and Fingal.

“This will bring to 5 the number of family hubs that we operate. These emergency accommodation services offer a vast improvement on hotels and B&Bs. Our staff are making every effort to secure long-term housing for families in our hubs to make their stay in homelessness as short as possible.”

Peter McVerry Trust said it has worked closely with the DRHE, Local authorities and the Department of Housing to secure and deliver the new services.

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