Minister: Plans in place to get homeless people off the streets tonight; temperatures drop to -5

2/2 There is safe shelter & food available for everyone who needs it. My thanks to our partners @PMVTrust who placed everyone they could get in last night (and still with extra capacity had it been needed).

— Eoghan Murphy (@MurphyEoghan) December 9, 2017

Temperatures are set to plummet to around -5 degrees, leading to homeless services taking action to shelter rough sleepers.

The Peter McVerry Trust says they're confident they have enough beds for anyone who needs them.

CEO Pat Doyle is urging members of the public who sees anyone sleeping on the streets to get in touch with them.

He said: "You can alert us by ring the DRHE's phone number freephone number - that's on the DRHE's website.

"You can send a text alert and we can go and pick people up and bring them in.

"We're confident that if people want to come in tonight, we can get people in, we will have enough places to get everybody in."

Telephone - 01 2226861

Earlier: Dublin’s Lord Mayor has called for more emergency beds to be opened for the homeless - with another night of sub-zero temperatures ahead.

Mícheál MacDonncha says additional beds had been made available - but he would like to see them brought online much quicker.

At least eight homeless people have died on Irish streets over the past 12 weeks.

Mr MacDonncha says emergency accommodation is only part of the solution - and called for the most vulnerable homeless to be moved directly into permanent housing.

He said: "In some cases, people who have sadly died on our streets numbers of those were in emergency accommodation, they were accessing services.

"I think in some cases it wasn’t for them; every person is different, every person has different problems and issues.

"We need a complete set of solutions."

The cold snap is set to continue with temperates expected to drop below freezing tonight.

A status orange snow-ice warning is in place for Connacht, Cavan, Monaghan, Donegal, Dublin, Kildare, Laois, Longford, Louth, Wicklow, Offaly, Westmeath and Meath.

This means significant falls of snow are expected Saturday night and into Sunday. 

Earlier, homeless charities said they are beyond words to describe the crisis facing Ireland’s homeless.

With temperatures plunging as low as -4C and snow on the ground in some parts of the country people are still struggling to find accommodation.

Anthony Flynn from Dublin’s Inner City Helping Homeless said they can not seem to get through to the Government about how serious the homeless crisis is.

"We were still trying to accommodate families [at teatime last night] that haven’t been given emergency accommodation through the normal central placement service processes," he said.

"It was 3C at 6pm last night. Families are waiting up until 9 or 10pm to be accommodated into emergency units," he added.