Reports suggest children are being placed into care because their parents are at risk of becoming homeless.

According to the Sunday Business Post, in some cases parents are making the decision instead of bringing them into emergency accommodation.

Focus Ireland says hundreds of families have became homeless so far this year and urgent help is needed.

It follows calls from campaigner Fr Peter McVerry for the government to introduce rent controls or increase rent allowance to stop driving tenants into homelessness.

In the first ten months of this year, 800 children and their families lost their homes. In Dublin alone, 45 families became homeless last month.

While new figures from the Dublin Region Homeless Executive showed that the number of families living in emergency accommodation in Dublin has more than doubled in the past year.

In late October, there were 1,101 people in families - 680 children and their 421 parents - in all types of emergency accommodation, marking the highest level since the housing crisis began.

The children's charity Barnardos says they regularly work with families who are in danger of becoming homeless.

Their chief executive is Fergus Finlay:

Meanwhile, a Fine Gael backbencher says the government is determined to solve the homelessness problem.

TD Mary Mitchell O'Connor says it is awful to hear about children being affected by homelessness:

Originally posted at 12.01pm