Successful homeless day of action in Dublin

Dublin Ógra Shinn Féin organised a successful twenty-four hour day of action to highlight the homelessness crisis. Activists travelled from Laois, Meath and Fermanagh to take part in events which included a twelve-hour sleep out at the GPO on Saturday night.

At 10am activists erected the weekly stall at the GPO, asking the public to sign a petition calling on the Government to a) immediately combat the current homelessness crisis, and b) to ensure no bank repossesses anyone’s home while public money is being pumped into these banks. Hundreds of signatures were collected and the support from passers-by was positive.

Dublin Ógra spokesperson Shane McKenna said; "We hope this sleepout will go a long way to highlight this worsening crisis. There are 60,000 on local authority housing waiting lists, and there are 25,000 vacant homes in the Dublin city council area alone. Of the 5,000 people who are homeless, 1,000 of them are children. These are people who sleep rough, live in emergency accomodation or in inadequate, insecure or unsafe housing. There has never been a better time to address this issue and provide mainstream housing to those badly in need. We are calling on the public to sign out petition and we will stay active on this issue in the coming months."