Search Results for 'Crisis'

By Pat Doyle, CEO of Peter McVerry Trust

While the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the number of homes listed for sale dropping dramatically, property prices in Westmeath were two per cent higher during the first quarter of the calendar year when compared with the same time period in 2019.

Galway Simon Community has expressed its concern about the escalating Covid-19 crisis but assures the general public they are doing everything they can to ensure those they are supporting can remain safe.

This too will end, but, when it does, we will emerge into a totally transformed world, in which every aspect of our lives, socially, economically, and politically, will be reshaped by what we are about to experience.

The housing and homelessness crisis is the “defining issue for this generation”, with nearly 10,000 people homeless; home ownership at its lowest in 50 years; while thousands are caught “in a trap” with “sky-high rents” and insecure tenure.

Budget 2020 has "failed to seriously address" the State's housing and accommodation crisis, and it is now time that An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar declare a National Housing Crisis Emergency.

The Simon Communities launched their Closing the Door on Homelessness campaign this week. The charity, which is marking 50 years since its foundation in Ireland in 1969, has launched the campaign to tell the stories of people it has supported to close the door on homelessness. In the campaign, Simon Community clients will be sharing their experiences of the safety and security of closing their own front door behind them. In 2018, the Simon Communities around the country ‘closed the door’ for more than 2,400 men, women and children across Ireland, helping them move out of homelessness and into a secure home.

More than 500 people, including close to 200 children, in the west of Ireland are having to live in emergency accommodation, with the west the only region of the State to show an increase in the number of those homeless.

As a housing crisis abounds in Athlone, local election aspirant Fianna Fáil Councillor, Aengus O’Rourke, has spoken of the need to adopt a more pro-active, if not aggressive, approach which he notes could go a long way to resolving the present residential property shortage.