Cavan not asked to home dublins homeless

Cavan County Council said it has not been approach by the Department for the Environment in relation to controversial plans to relocate hundreds of homeless Dublin families to vacant homes around the country.
To be considered by Government in the autumn, work on the proposed 'rural relocation scheme’ for homeless families is understood to be at an early stage as a range of measures are considered to tackle the spiralling homelessness crisis.
The number of families with children homeless in the capital is now at its highest in more than a decade – 1,185 children from 556 families were counted as homeless in Dublin last month.
Numbers are also escalating in the commuter counties, as well as in the main urban areas of Cork, Galway and Limerick.
Cavan County Council said it “has not been approached by the Department for the Environment with regard a rural relocation scheme which would see hard to rent local authority housing offered to families claiming to be homeless”.
Last week, James Bannon, TD for Longford-Westmeath refused to apologise for comments about Dubliners creating crime in rural Ireland.
“Longford has already experienced social and criminal problems visited upon the county by families exported from their native environment in the city of Dublin to previously quiet towns and villages,” he said.
Bannon’s remarks were described by prominent Dubliners as “discriminatory, derogatory and insulting”. But he has refused to withdraw them.
“You don’t make statements to retract them,” Bannon said, though he did qualifiy the remark.
“Some [Dublin] people have caused hardship and social disruption in existing communities - and I emphasise 'some’. You would have social problems caused by local people too. It’s not all Dublin people ... it was just a passing phrase,” he said.