Dr. Una Burns:

I am head of policy and communications with Novas. I thank the committee for the invitation and opportunity to share the experience of our clients who live in our services and whom we work with in the community.

Novas is a national homeless charity and an approved housing body. Annually, we support more than 5,000 people who are homeless, at risk of homelessness or experiencing addiction. We provide services in Dublin, Limerick, Tipperary, Clare, Kerry and west Cork.

Today, I will focus on the number of deaths experienced among the homeless community in 2020 and provide some insight into why there was an increase in such deaths. For example, in Novas services, 13 people died in 2020, seven people died in 2019 and six people died in 2018. From that we can see that there was, even among our own clients who were in our services, a significant increase in the number of people who died. Some of that can be attributed to the increase in the number of people we supported, but the number of deaths is disproportionate nonetheless. I will point to maybe a few reasons this happened and to some issues that we can address to prevent the extent of it happening in the future.