Inner City Helping Homeless asking EU for support to tackle homelessness
Representatives of Inner City Helping Homeless will travel to Brussels later today to receive the European Citizenship Prize from the EU Parliament.
The organisation is being honoured for its work in supporting the almost 10,000 people currently homeless across the country.
CEO Anthony Flynn says they'll be using this opportunity to ask the EU for more support to help the homeless situation in Ireland.
"We're asking that the EU now come in, have a look and see exactly how bad things are in this country," he said.
"We wouldn't be winning this award only for the work we do on the ground in regard to housing and homelessness.
"While we're out there today, we're asking that an investigation be opened up, we look at how bad things are on the ground and maybe how Europe can tackle or help us end that problem."
Meanwhile, he's calling for a substantial increase in funding to the housing budget.
They say an extra €2bn should be committed to tackling the housing crisis.
"We need the red tape taken out with regard to legislation and procurement of housing," said Mr Flynn.
"We have the land banks available to build. What we need is the money for the councils to be able to build.
"Councillors are still stating they haven't got that money on the ground to do that. Daithí Doolan is the housing SPC chair [of Dublin City Council] and he says the money has not been available from the government for the last number of months.
"We're asking that the €2bn, as they saw in the motion in front of the Dáil last week, be put forward and we start building dramatically immediately."
