Dublin City Council chief executive Owen Keegan has been slammed following his "deeply insulting" comments regarding homeless support groups.
The DCC boss called people who provide tents to homeless people "virtue signallers". He said that these groups "continue to promote and sustain rough sleeping".
Sinn Fein's Micheal Mac Donnacha has criticised the remarks and said: "It is deeply insulting for Dublin City Council Chief Executive Owen Keegan to state that groups assisting homeless people in our city ‘continue to promote and sustain rough sleeping’. This is simply not true. The people providing these voluntary services are trying to meet the needs of the most marginalised people in our city.
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"We have record levels of homelessness in all its forms because of the abject failure of successive governments, including the present one, to tackle the housing crisis. That Mr Keegan would seek to blame those citizens and groups who try to assist homeless people beggars belief."
He added: "Tackling the causes and consequences of rough sleeping is hugely complicated, with many rough sleepers suffering from trauma, addiction and mental health issues. These sometimes act as barriers to accessing emergency accommodation. The homeless of this city would be better served if the Chief Executive's remaining months in the job were spent overcoming these same barriers rather than making ill-judged media comments.
“Owen Keegan’s remarks do a disservice to the City Council itself and to the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive which does such important work to address homelessness. We need coordination and cooperation between all services, including statutory, community and voluntary groups.”
Mr Keegan's comments came during an interview with the Irish Times where he said: "The council does not support the provision of homeless services on street and we disagree fundamentally with those groups – some well-intended some merely virtue signallers – who continue to promote and sustain rough sleeping."
While the number of people using homeless accommodation continues to rise, the number of rough sleepers in Dublin saw a 3% decrease down to 91 in annual figures released the week before Christmas. One-quarter of those were using tents.
"The supply of emergency accommodation on most nights has exceeded demand, and accommodation is available to all in need of emergency accommodation. In these circumstances, where emergency accommodation is available, the city council has no hesitation in removing tents while working intensively with the tent occupants to ensure they avail of that emergency accommodation."
He added that the council worked closely with the gardai and homeless agencies to "keep control on tent numbers". He said that he didn't want Dublin to turn into "downtown San Francisco".
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