Environment Minister Alan Kelly is to meet with councillors to discuss the homelessness crisis in Dublin.

It follows repeated demands from the Fianna Fáil Leader on the Council, Paul McAuliffe, after it emerged that Dublin City Council was being left with an €18.5m funding deficit for homeless services this year.

Councillor McAuliffe said: "There has effectively been a communications blackout between the council that administers homeless services and the Minister who funds these services for the past few weeks.

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"This has made an already bad situation worse, with the numbers of people falling homeless in the city increasing every single week and a number of very grave cases emerging where families have been forced to sleep on the streets.

"We need to set aside our differences, put our heads together and come up with a comprehensive plan to address the black hole in funding for homeless services in Dublin.

"We also need to come up with a comprehensive and realistic plan to increase the social housing stock and speed up the availability of safe, responsible housing developments for people who are in desperate need of a home."

(CD/JP)