Nationally, the number of people accessing emergency accommodation has fallen, due to an error in how they've been counted for a number of months.
The number of homeless people in the midlands has seen a substantial increase.
209 people accessed emergency accommodation in August, an increase of 19 on the figures for July.
The number of homeless adults in the midlands in August jumped to 140, up five on the month prior.
57 of those were in Offaly, the highest number in the region, surpassing Westmeath - the figure there is 53.
Laois remains significantly below its regional counterparts in terms of the number of people accessing emergency accommodation, at 29.
65 children were also homeless in the midlands last month - that's up ten on the figure for July.
Nationally, 12,691 people were without permanent accommodation, which is down more than 200 when compared to the month prior.
The reduction is due to an error in how the figures were recorded for a number of months, leading to the numbers in Dublin being overstated by 308.
In a statement, PASS says:
"PASS is the national database used for the administration of homeless activity across all 31 local authorities.
It is also the official mechanism for tracking and measuring homelessness in Ireland.
In August 2023, a major change to PASS was made to provide a portal for Private Emergency Accommodation (PEA) facilities in Dublin to ‘live’ book residents in and out of services.
Prior to this, PEA facilities used a standalone booking system and DRHE staff manually inputted a copy of their records onto PASS.
The new PEA portal went live on August 17, 2023. During the process of on-boarding the PEA bookings onto PASS, it emerged that a number of bookings had been correctly opened on PASS when the original booking was made but not closed when the individuals left the PEA, i.e. the booking was closed correctly on the PEA bed management system but the
record (of exit) was not replicated on the PASS system.
Following discussions with the Department about independent oversight, the DRHE has invited an external person of appropriate qualification to independently review the data correction.
The errors, related only to bookings for single adults, occurred in a context of tens of thousands of bookings made every year in the Dublin Region.
The Dublin figures for August 2023 show a reduction of 308 single adults.
This reduction is due to the correction of past data and not a significant change in presentations and/or exits to tenancy."
A record number of children are registered as homeless in Ireland.
There are 3,895 young people growing up in B&Bs and hotels - while the overall total stands at 12,691.
Despite a slight drop from previous months, due to an overstating of figures in Dublin , it is still 17% higher than a year ago.
Housing Minister Darragh O'Brien says homelessness remains a major problem:
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