Aontú Clare representative June Dillon has called on Clare County Council to begin officially recording the numbers of people who die while homeless in the county.
Currently, Dublin City Council is the only local authority in Ireland that records deaths among people experiencing homelessness. In 2023, 56 homeless people died in Dublin. By October 2024, 40 people had already died – including, heartbreakingly, a child under 17 years old. The peak year was 2021, when 64 lives were lost. Aontú has also proposed that Limerick City and County Council adopt this practice, and June Dillon is now urging Clare to follow suit.
Ms. Dillon said: “It is a sobering thought that in Clare, as in most of Ireland, the deaths of homeless people pass unrecorded, unacknowledged, and too often unnoticed. These are not mere statistics – they are human beings, each with a story, each with intrinsic worth. Some had families, some had none; some had jobs once, others never did. But all had dignity, and all deserved better than to slip into invisibility even in death.
While homeless deaths are often higher in the big cities, we cannot ignore the fact that many people from smaller towns and rural areas end up in the largest county town or nearest city when seeking emergency accommodation or a bed for the night. Unless every county council records these figures, we will never have a true national picture of how many lives are being lost, or where those deaths are coming from.
How can we claim to be addressing homelessness when we do not even know how many of our fellow citizens are dying because of it? It is staggering, sad, and frankly bizarre that the State allows this silence to persist. The absence of recording creates a dangerous invisibility – people are dying without their deaths being acknowledged, without their circumstances being investigated.
Every person who dies while homeless deserves to have their death recognised, their story honoured, and their family given answers. Recording these deaths is the absolute minimum requirement of a compassionate society. It ensures accountability from service providers, highlights system failures, and points to where intervention is most urgently needed.
If Dublin can do it, and if Aontú has already proposed it in Limerick, then Clare must not be left behind. Let us honour those we have lost, let us shine a light on the failures, and let us build policies that prevent future tragedies. The time for action is now.”