Some 110 individual hotel rooms have been secured in Dublin to help homeless people during the coronavirus crisis.

This has been done by the Peter McVerry Trust in collaboration with the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE).

Nine homeless people have been confirmed to have COVID-19 to date in the capital, with 51 people isolating.

While 500 beds have already been made available.

Pat Doyle is CEO of the Peter McVerry Trust. He told Newstalk Breakfast they are badly needed.

"We have 660 beds in the Greater Dublin Area in partnership with the DRHE.

"We immediately in our preparations targeted about 160 individuals who we felt had complex health issues."

"If you've been on the street for 15 years, maybe your health hasn't been the priority.

"A lot of homeless people would have complex health issues - we'd have a lot of people that would have had addiction issues over the years and their health would have been affected by that.

"We've been preparing well - I suppose we've had an extra week or two, it's moved slower nationally than we expected.

"And it's moved slower within our population".

"The last of our hotel beds will come on on Monday, so what we hope to do by Monday then is pick up everybody else that needs to cocoon - tested or not - and get them into their own individual en-suite room so that we can give them the best chance".