TWO people currently living rough on the streets of Killarney have been offered accommodation on a number of occasions but they have refused it, a meeting of the Kerry Joint Policing Committee has heard.
Cllr Donal Grady said they have been “offered a bed” several times as well as a place to stay in Killarney but they have turned it down.
Officials from Kerry County Council’s housing section have visited the two on a number of occasions, including at night, but offers of help were declined.
He said the people in question are regularly seen in the town centre and they are sleeping outside a privately owned property.
Cllr Grady said he and his son had approached them another night to offer help but they said they wouldn’t go in anywhere.
“The next thing we’ll have one or two dying on the street and we’ll have an awful name all of a sudden. Our council and our gardai will be asked what they are doing below in Killarney,” he said.
“We must get together and try to do something about it,” Cllr Grady stated.
“I have pity for the homeless but I’ve no pity when they have refused a place to stay,” he said.
He added that the people involved are not on the local authority housing list because they are not from Killarney and they need to apply for housing in their native counties.
Chief Superintendent Eileen Foster, head of An Garda Siochana in Kerry, said homelessness was a matter for all of society to address and it’s not an offence.
“It is not a matter for gardai unless an offience is notified to us,” she said.
Senior Kerry County Council official, Charlie O’Sullivan, told the meeting that the local authority has to work within statutory guidelines when dealing with the issue of homelessness.
“If a person refuses accommodation then there’s nothing we can do about it,” he said.
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