Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

No they are not. We checked it at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government last week. Women living in domestic violence shelters, 5,000 people living in direct provision, people living in emergency shelters that are not funded by local authorities, and couch surfers are not counted in the official statistics. If these groups were counted what would be the real homeless rate? Would it be 20,000, 30,000 or more than that? Fr. McVerry is right. There are 500,000 people living in distress daily as a result of their housing situation.

The National Homeless and Housing Coalition has called for a national demonstration on the streets of Dublin on Saturday, 1 December. This is an important demonstration and I appeal to everyone affected by the housing crisis, by high rents, by being the locked-out generation who want to see change on this issue and who are dissatisfied with the do-nothing approach of the Government to join that demonstration in the largest possible numbers on the day.

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