Housing and homelessness must not "fall off the radar" for the next government as the country begins to reopen.

It comes after the number of people accessing homeless services decreased for the fourth month in a row.

There were 9,335 people in emergency accommodation last month – a drop of 572 on April.

It means 290s adults, 282 children and 179 families left homeless services last month.

It comes after the collapse in the tourism market caused many landlords to take properties off the short-stay market and offer them up for long-term lease.

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Pat Doyle, CEO of the Peter McVerry Trust said homeless services have been working hard to get people off the street during the lockdown.

“During the pandemic, when there was no-one else on the street, we were able to do a bit more work in identifying rough sleepers, tracking rough sleepers and encouraging them into housing,” he said.

“Then, with landlords not going to the market with properties, we were getting more offers for properties than we have had heretofore.

“So there has been some mixed good from the pandemic for us. We have had more access to properties, easier access to those on the street and greater increases of people moving into housing first.”

He said the next government must ensure that the numbers continue to decrease as the country recovers from the pandemic.

“There are 572 households less in homeless services and lot of those are children so it is good news,” he said.

“What we need to do now, as the new Government is formed, is to make sure that as we are tackling the unemployment issue - which we absolutely will need to do now - housing and homelessness do not fall off the radar.

“The budgets and the funding can’t slip. We need to keep this going now and ensure that in two months’ time, we are talking about the sixth month in a row that we have a reduction in homelessness.”

You can listen back to the full interview here: