Homeless charity Depaul has said it recorded a two-fold increase in the number of men, women and children it helped last year.
According to its 2022 annual report, Depaul helped over 7,400 facing homelessness in 2022, over 1,600 of them were children.
The charity also said 763 families came through Depaul's services last year.
Depaul also said 14 babies were born into its services.
It said one in four users of its service were drug users and it saved the lives of 202 people by administering a medicine that rapidly reverses an opioid overdose.
It said the figures highlight the urgent need to address the issue of intergenerational homelessness.
Around 40% of those seeking help from Depaul were aged 18-30, with many coming directly from the care system, emphasising the need for early intervention, it said.
The charity’s Chief Executive David Carroll has said the charity focuses and concentrates on supporting those people with the greatest complexities within the homeless population.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, he said one of the biggest challenges is how to get people out of temporary accommodation in their current homelessness crisis and provide support for them to be able to make lives for themselves in the future particularly because of the long and traumatic backgrounds that some people experience.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
Mr Carroll also said that people are staying with Depaul longer.
He said: "We are finding that people are staying with us longer over the last year, year and a half, people are averaging over six months if not over a year in staying with ourselves.
"And the longer that children stay in homelessness, the greater the impact that that may have from a longer-term point of view.
"All of the research that is around [is] that children who are in homelessness have more vulnerabilities and are more likely to experience developmental delays and health problems going forward.
"And we have a particular focus this year on making sure that the issue of intergenerational homelessness, making sure that families who have been in homelessness their children don't experience homelessness going forward."
He said that a childcare worker is being provided with temporary accommodation for children.
"It’s hugely important in order to be able to support children, access education, access play and support parents to be able to support their children when in a really difficult situation," Mr Carroll said.
He said: "We have to be kind of realistic that those families do to do kind of fall apart and do break down.
"But there are other reasons why homelessness exists, including economic reasons and ability to be able to access proper and adequate housing, what we're focusing on is that the proper housing does exist."
Mr Carroll added the focus is on getting people out of temporary accommodation as soon as possible.
"That is around having a vibrant housing sector that is affordable and accessible to all," he said.
