THE NUMBERS OF people sleeping rough in Dublin has reached a record high.

Inner City Helping Homeless (ICHH) is a group which started working with homeless people in Dublin’s inner city six months ago.

They say they’ve logged 2,241 rough sleepers that they fed and clothed in the space of 28 nights.

ICHH says that a nightly run is now averaging 80 rough sleepers.

Inner City Helping Homeless Director, Anthony Flynn, said:

“These figures are a startling indication of the homeless problem that currently exists within the city.

ICHH are coming across new cases every night we are on the streets and have seen an increase week on week in the numbers we are interacting with.

“ICHH only two weeks ago declared that we were at crisis point in regard to rough sleepers on feeding 100 people in a single night”.

Investment

Flynn said that “both the government and local council are far off the mark when it comes to eradicating the problem”.

He also added that homelessness needs better resources and investment into long term housing to combat the issue.

For too long money has been spent on short term accommodation for Dublin’s homeless with over €9m being spent in 2013 and not enough investment in long term accommodation’

The Dublin Region Homeless Executive will soon release the official figures for the numbers of people sleeping rough for the last quarter.

The rough sleeper count figures for winter 2013 noted that there was a minimum of 139 people sleeping rough across the Dublin region.

ICHH predicts that the last report compiled in March will mark a stark increase in figures.

Read: Rough sleeper numbers up as Dublin’s inner city hits ‘crisis point’>

Read: Number of homeless on streets of Dublin rises 25 per cent>