It could take 180 years to clear Dublin's housing waiting list, according to Councillors who are calling on the government to release funding so they can begin building homes.
Figures released today so there are 19,752 applications on Dublin City Council housing list, and while that is a drop of 25 since April, it does not include the 7,409 on the council's transfer list, which has risen by 941.
Daithi Doolan, Chairperson of the City Council's Housing Committee, said the Government "cannot sleep walk through the housing crisis any longer."
He has called on Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy to "greatly increase" the housing budget, which currently stands at €732m. That is €100m less than what was available to spend on housing in 2010.
"Dublin City Council has the land and the plans for housing developments. Minister Murphy needs to cut the department's red tape and meet with Dublin City Council as a matter of urgency and discuss directly funding our housing proposals", Councillor Doolan said.
Meanwhile, Sinn Fein is accusing the Government of deliberately under-reporting the scale of the homeless crisis.
The latest figures from the Department of Housing show almost 5 thousand adults and 2 thousand 7 hundred children were staying in emergency accommodation in May.
But Sinn Fein says those figures are deliberately misleading because they don’t include those staying in domestic violence refuges or those in direct provision who’ve been granted asylum.
