A council official told a homeless man ‘We are not a drop in service’, after the man arrived at their offices earlier today in a last ditch bid to have his housing needs assessed.
Peter Healy, arrived at Buvinda House, shortly before lunch, accompanied by Independent councillor Alan Lawes, after days of frustration in his bid to contact a housing officer.
Lawes told Meath Live, ‘I initially made a representation on Peters behalf on Wednesday of last week, and sent a follow up text on Friday to see if there was any update and got no response.
‘To be fair the council did try and contact Peter by phone on Monday last and he missed the call, but as I explained when you are homeless it is not always easy to have your phone fully charged.
‘Today I went with him into the council building as I couldn’t get through via phone to the homeless officers and ended up calling reception and telling them we were coming in.
‘We we were there for just over two hours and no official came down there was no face to face interaction at all.
‘Eventually I got through on the phone and the guy suggested we couldn’t be seen for hours so I said we’d wait, then a second bloke called us and told us the council offices were not a drop in service and even more incredibly that there would be nobody available to assess Peter’s housing needs until next Tuesday.
‘I have highlighted issues like this in the media before and the council have asked me to speak to them before I speak to the papers, well if they’d answer their phone it would be easier to speak to them.
‘The bottom line is I suppose resources, if they haven’t enough people to answer the phones they need to hire more and they need to hire them now before the effect of the lifting of the eviction ban kicks in.
In the research for this article Meath Live called the council homeless department on three separate occasions.
Nobody answered.
Meath County Council have been contacted for comment.
