‘Cork has enough beds for homeless’

CORK has enough beds for every homeless person this Christmas, says the city council’s housing chief.

Valerie O’Sullivan, director of housing, said that the council and the charity sector have enough beds to take in anybody who wants help across the Cork and Kerry region.

“Absolutely, there is a bed available for everyone who finds themselves homeless in this region. That is a fact,” she said.

According to recent statistics, there are 163 emergency beds in the city, with another 20 bed and breakfast rooms block-booked to deal with demand. Approximately 200 more people are being supported in longer-term accommodation.

However, Ms O’Sullivan acknowledged that there will still be a number in the single figures sleeping rough due to personal circumstances.

“For each and every one of them, there is a story. When you see someone on the street, it’s not a housing issue,” she said, adding that those people are dealing with issues like addiction and psychiatric problems, or have been banned from shelters due to behaviour.

“It’s so sad. You could build a house for them and they wouldn’t survive in it,” she said, adding that they needed specific help for their complex problems like psychiatric treatment or rehabilitation.

Brendan Dempsey, regional president of St Vincent de Paul, said that there is about enough beds to meet demand in Cork, but that successive governments have failed people by cutting and failing to improve psychiatric care for those who need it. He said that the charity sector is not equipped to deal with those people.

“We’re not set up to nurse people. Hostels are not the place for them, but successive governments have been closing down psychiatric wards.

“It is really only the State that can solve that problem. They are hugely helpful to us, but the numbers, at the end of the day, show we are close. So surely there is something they could do,” he said.

Mr Dempsey said that SVP is busier than ever this Christmas trying to help people who have fallen on hard times. In recent days it has given out more than 4,000 food hampers around the county.

He praised the volunteers of his own charity and others, and thanked the public for their support.

“It’s been an extremely hard year for us. We’re trying to spread the finances over more and more people. The volunteers are the people that can make a change locally where the Government can’t go, and it doesn’t matter what charity.”