DUBLIN, April 30 (Xinhua) -- Ireland's homeless figures in March remained at record levels despite the government's pledge to solve the issue, reported local media RTE on Tuesday.
The report quoted the statistics released by the government earlier in the day as saying that the number of homeless people across the country had increased by 41 persons from the previous month to 10,305 people in March.
The homeless in the month included 6,484 adults and 3,821 children, involving a total of 1,733 families, said the homeless report of the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government.
The report found that 67 percent of the homeless people in March were in Dublin, capital of Ireland, which is home to nearly one-third of the country's population which stood at about 4.9 million at the end-2018.
Local charity organizations criticized the government for its failure to tackle the homeless issue in the country.
It is clear from the latest figures that the government's policy has been a total failure, RTE quoted an official from the Dublin-based Inner City Helping Homeless as saying.
Commenting on the March homeless figures, Irish Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy said that the government would continue to put efforts in to prevent people from entering emergency accommodation while trying to exit as many families and individuals from homelessness as possible.
The Irish government has announced an extra housing allocation in its 2019 budget for building an additional 10,000 social housing units as part of its efforts to solve the homeless issue in the country.
In another development, a report released Tuesday by Dublin Region Homeless Executive said that there were 128 rough sleepers found in Dublin in April, which represented a drop of 28 persons from the winter count of 156 people.
The report said that 79 percent of these rough sleepers were Irish nationals while 21 percent were non-Irish nationals.
