The Government being unable to house newly-arrived international protection applicants has been branded a 'shocking failure'.
A spokesperson for the Department of Integration has said tents and sleeping bags will be provided to people where required, although women and children will still be accommodated.
Dún Laoghaire People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett told The Hard Shoulder a better plan should have been in place.
"The idea that, when you look at the freezing temperatures that we're looking at now, that anybody should be left on the streets - whether they're international protection applicants, Ukrainian refugees or homeless people - is just a shocking failure of Government policy," he said.
"It's the bitter fruits of their failure to address that wider housing and accommodation crisis."
Deputy Boyd Barrett said the issue was something that could have been foreseen.
"It is a failure that I think they could and should have foreseen," he said.
"I still think they're not taking the sort of measures necessary, particularly when you come to dealing with the still very widespread instance of empty building and properties."
He said these buildings are "shamefully sitting empty when there are people who are potentially going to be sitting out freezing in the cold".
'Empty buildings'
Deputy Boyd Barrett said there is one such instance which "infuriates" him.
"Jurys Hotel [in Ballsbridge] is just sitting there, empty, for I don't know how many years now, with probably hundreds of rooms," he said.
"There's many other buildings you could list which are sitting there around the city, which I cannot for the life of me understand how the Government has not long since taken much more robust measures to bring these buildings back into use.
"As well as, obviously, the more general failure to address the wider housing crisis".
Ukrainians unaffected
Effective Aid Ukraine Founder Tom McEnaney told the show he understands Ukrainians will not be affected by this latest announcement.
"I've been assured that people coming from Ukraine are unaffected," he said.
"It's single men, it's refugees as opposed to people from Ukraine who would be coming over here under the Temporary Protection Directive.
"There are very, very few men coming out of Ukraine; a handful of very elderly men, but even then it's very, very small.
"Almost all of the people who would be arriving here from Ukraine are women and children".
Mr McEnaney said there is a 'resistance' to groups of men coming into Ireland.
"There's a resistance across the country to men being accommodated in rural towns," he said.
"It's driven by fear; I think it's probably true to say that people are fearful of groups of men than they are of women and children.
"So, you don't get the same resistance to Ukrainians coming here temporarily," he added.
The Irish Refugee Council has previously warned that it is "fundamentally unsafe" for asylum seekers to sleep rough.
A recent ESRI report found that Ireland has seen a significant increase in immigration.
The report noted that 141,600 people arrived in Ireland in the year to April 2023 - a 31% increase from the same period last year.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told the Dáil in October that there was a limit on the capacity for accommodating refugees and asylum seekers.
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