Why don't councillors talk as much about homelessness at meetings anymore?

In January 2025, Dublin City Council announced that it planned to introduce by-laws to regulate on-street food services, also known as soup runs. 

Many councillors said they supported some regulation, but that the rules shouldn’t be so onerous that they deter the groups from operating. 

People in a queue for food outside the GPO on O’Connell Street at the time said they opposed the regulations. 

“They’re a disgrace,” said Joey Malone. “People rely on these services because of the cost of food.”

Speaking by phone on Tuesday, Lorraine O’Connor, founder of Muslim Sisters of Éire, which operates a food service outside the GPO, said she hasn’t heard about it at all since.

These planned regulations, which the council had been pursuing for years, don’t show up on any of the recent agendas for the council’s housing committee.  

A council spokesperson said this week that it is still working on drafting those bylaws. 

This is not the only homelessness-related issue that has faded away. Oversight of this whole area of council operations has kind of slipped off the agenda of the committee. 

Fianna Fáil Councillor Deirdre Heney, who has chaired the housing committee since after the local elections in June 2024, and as chair reduced how frequently the committee meets in public, disputes this.

She says the committee is consistently working on homelessness, together with the director of the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE). “It's something we are constantly working on with Mary Hayes,” says Heney. “She is there at every meeting.”

But others say they’ve noticed the change in the prominence of the issue at this council committee and want to see it reversed.

“It should be a standing item on the agenda,” says Ber Grogan, executive director of Simon Communities of Ireland. 

Yes, says Sinn Féin Councillor Daithí Doolan, the committee should meet each month and discuss homelessness each month because housing “is the number one issue facing the city, it is the number one crisis and number one challenge”.

Green Party Councillor Hazel Chu, who used to chair the homeless subcommittee, when it existed, says she wants to see it re-re-established. “I can’t help but wonder if this has turned into somewhat of a political football,” she said. 

Slipping down the agenda

Regular homeless reports at the committee started in November 2016, when 5,146 people had stayed in emergency accommodation in the previous week, and Doolan, the Sinn Féin councillor, was chair. 

Up to June 2024, the housing committee met dozens of times – monthly, generally – and homelessness was an item on its agenda for most meetings. 

This continued through the 2019 local elections, after Labour Councillor Alison Gilliland took over as chair of the committee.

A report on homelessness was presented at the meetings up until April 2023.

The regular homelessness reports outlined the number of people in homeless services, whether the households were single people or families with children and how long they were spending homeless. 

From mid-2023 to mid-2024, these reports disappeared from the agenda, but at the time there was still a regular standing item for homelessness because the homeless sub-committee, which had been established in February 2021, regularly reported back to the full committee.

In June 2024, there were local elections, and Heney, the Fianna Fáíl councillor, took over as chair of the committee. 

By then, homelessness was slipping down the committee’s agenda, not featuring on it with the same consistency. 

After the election, the homeless sub-committee was not reconstituted.

Heney said she planned to hold six public meetings of the housing committee each year, but that she would also organise more workshops and site visits as well. 

From June 2024 to May 2026, the committee met 10 times, and homelessness was an agenda item at three of the meetings, and formed part of an agenda item at a fourth.  

Meanwhile, more and more people were becoming homeless. The most recent figures show 12,465 people homeless in Dublin. 

A DRHE spokesperson says that the agenda for the housing committee is decided by the chairperson in consultation with council staff. Last June, there was a workshop dedicated to homelessness for committee members, she says. 

“These workshops provide members with the opportunity to engage in more detailed consideration of key areas relating to homelessness, including accommodation provision, outreach services, NQSF [National Quality Standards Framework], and research,” says the spokesperson. 

The spokesperson didn't directly answer why the homeless report was taken off the agenda. “The DRHE circulates a detailed monthly report to all Councillors each month and publish it online,” she says.

Outstanding issues

As well as the increasing numbers of people who are homeless, there are other items the council has committed to pursue.

There are the soup run bye-laws.

A spokesperson for the DRHE says it is still working on the by-laws to regulate on-street food services, following a review it did almost five years ago. 

“Once the draft is finalised for public consultation, and in accordance with legislative requirements, the bye-laws will be advertised in newspapers and made available for public viewing in an appropriate public space,” says the spokesperson. 

There is also an effort to improve homeless services. 

Last summer a review, carried out by the Centre for Effective Services, found that there was “strong dissatisfaction” with standards in homeless accommodation, which was described as "chaotic and lacking basic dignity.”

A spokesperson said that the DRHE continues to improve quality standards across both charity-run and privately-run hostels. “There are unannounced inspections held in the services along with inspections held as part of our Independent Inspectorate,” says a council spokesperson. The inspection reports are published on the DRHE website, she says. 

Also, the council’s homeless action plan for 2025 to 2027, included among the things the council wanted to achieve: “Reduce the reliance on the Private sector for emergency accommodation.”

Doolan, the Sinn Féin councillor, says that with the regular public committee meetings only every second month now, the agenda becomes “very weighty” and some issues are not being discussed in real time.

But Heney, the Fianna Fáil councillor who chairs the committee, says homelessness has not slipped off the agenda under her watch. “Absolutely not,” she says. 

Chu and Doolan say the council should bring back the homelessness subcommittee, as the best place to thrash out all of the issues. 

Chu says she approached the council housing manager, Mick Mulhern, and the manager of the DRHE, Mary Hayes, and asked them to re-establish the subcommittee. “They didn’t give me a clear answer,” she says. 

Having a homelessness subcommittee or taskforce puts homelessness more central on the main committee’s agenda, says Chu. “Having something that is on the agenda monthly …  means that the issue is a priority.”

Doolan said he would “suggest that we should meet every month and have those DRHE stats and also reconstitute the homeless sub-group as well”. 

The monthly subcommittee meetings, which were not held in public, were valuable for facilitating open discussions and exploring detailed policy responses, he says.  

Which the subcommittee would then report back regularly to the main committee, as a standing agenda item.