Almost 4,000 people slept rough or at accommodation for homeless people on Census night last year.

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today released the figures.

They show that on April 10th 2011 3,808 people were accounted for this way.

2,539 were male and 1,269 were female.

12% of those were also classed as children.

There were 457 children aged 14 and under in the homeless count.

While 296 family units were counted as part of the homeless population, representing 905 people.

1,660 of the adults indicated that they were in the labour force at the time.

Almost 1/3 of the homeless population rated their general health as being ‘’Fair’, ‘Bad’ or ‘Very bad’.

This figure compares with 10% of the general population.

Deirdre Cullen is senior statistician at the CSO.

“This was the first time such a comprehensive approach to identifying homeless people in Ireland was undertaken as part of the census and follows strong cooperation among all the main stakeholders working in the area of homelessness in Ireland”.

The report examines the homeless population across a range of variables such as age, sex, marital status, general health and disability.

It also provides results on the level of education of homeless persons along with their economic status, as well as providing information on entire families who were homeless on Census night.

Read the full CSO report href="http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/census/documents/homelesspersonsinireland/Homeless%20persons%20in%20Ireland%20A%20special%20Census%20report.pdf">here

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