Homelessness “hasn’t changed” in Dublin over the last 40 years, according to a lifelong campaigner.

Alice Leahy, Director of the Alice Leahy Trust, said the State has been unable to get on top of homelessness in recent times despite record levels of income.

Over 13,000 people will be homeless across Ireland this Christmas.

On The Pat Kenny Show today, Ms Leahy noted it had been 40 years since she was first interviewed by the host.

“Homelessness hasn’t changed since then; the problems are still the same as they were 40 years ago,” she said.

“All of the money that has been spent, all of the experts, all of the strategies – what has changed?”

Homeless population

Ms Leahy said there is no way of knowing the true size of the homeless population in Ireland.

“We don’t get too bogged down in statistics,” she said.

“They make headlines and you hear about them but I think we have no idea of the real number of people who are homeless or sleeping rough.

“The people we concentrate on are those who are sleeping out.”

Alice Leahy of The Alice Leahy Trust in Rathmines in Dublin. Picture by: Josh Crosbie

Ms Leahy said homelessness will always be an issue.

“A lot of the people we meet are real loners but I prefer the term 'outsider' because it captures the lives of some of the people we work with better," she said.

“We don’t pry into people’s affairs but they do tell us and some of them have had terrible childhoods.”

Sleeping rough

People have their reasons for sleeping rough as opposed to using emergency accommodation, according to Ms Leahy.

“One man who ended up being killed on the streets, he would never go into accommodation because he had spent a lot of his time in prison,” she said.

“[Hostels] reminded him of being enclosed in a prison cell. These kinds of human feelings we don’t talk about anymore.

“We’re always going to have homelessness, people who don’t fit in, wouldn’t our world be a mad place if we were all the same?”

Easy to discuss

Ms Leahy said the way homelessness is looked at has changed.

“The problem of homelessness has almost become too easy to discuss now,” she said.

“It’s become all about figures, new strategies, and new ministers who want to ‘try and do their best’.

“Now there is so much red tape, so much bureaucracy and so much intrusion into the personal lives of people seeking accommodation.”

Ms Leahy added that Dublin has become an “unpleasant place” in recent times, pointing towards the recent Dublin Riots.

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Main image: Homeless person shelters from the cold Ha’penny Bridge in Dublin. Image: Michael Rooney / Alamy