Emergency shelters costing Dublin City Council €1m weekly

Dublin City Council is paying hotels, hostels and other emergency accommodation providers almost €1 million a week to shelter homeless people in the capital.

That is according to new figures from the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive (DRHE) which show for the nine months to the end of September the spend on emergency accommodation for the homeless totalled €34.85 million in Dublin City Council's area.

The average weekly spend on emergency accommodation works out at €968,148.

Last year, the city council paid city hoteliers €16.6 million to provide accommodation for the homeless and the new figures show that €26.6 million in payments had been made to hotels in the nine months to the end of September outstripping the 2015 total by €10 million.

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The spend for the first nine months coincided with the numbers of homeless families going over the 1,000 mark for the first time in Dublin at the end of September.

The figures show that payments to hoteliers in the third quarter from the start of the July to the end of September is the highest ever recorded at over €10.3 million.

B&Bs and hostels

In addition, the council paid emergency accommodation providers, including B&B and hostel owners, an additional €8.18 million during the first nine months of the year.

The figures also show that, between January and September of this year, a total of €69 million was spent on a variety of homeless services by all local authorities in Dublin.

The amount paid to individual hotels remains confidential. Last year, in response to a Freedom of Information request, the council declined to reveal what the 10 highest amounts paid to hotel operators/firms were or the top amounts received by privately owned hostels and B&Bs.

The council stated these details are commercially sensitive and it could damage the negotiating position of the council with private landlords/operators and could also result in further costs and the potential loss of accommodation.