Dublin, May 28 (IANS): The Irish government has revealed that there were 10,049 homeless people as of the week ending April 24, an increase of 224 people compared to a month ago.

This is the first time that the number of homeless people in the country has crossed over the 10,000-mark since February 2020, Xinhua news agency reported.

Latest data from Ireland's national statistics bureau CSO showed that the residential property prices in the country increased by 15.2 per cent in March this year compared with a year ago.

The CSO figures also showed that since early 2013 the residential property prices in Ireland have more than doubled.

In Dublin, home prices have risen nearly 123 per cent from February 2012 when the local property market crashed to its lowest point in the wake of the international financial crisis around 2007.

House rents in Ireland were almost 12 per cent higher in the first three months of this year compared with a year earlier, said Daft.ie, Ireland's largest property website.

In a statement on Friday, the Department of Housing said that the growing number of homeless people is a serious concern and it is trying every means to address the problem.

The Department added that the government provided 9,183 new social homes in 2021, an increase of 17 per cent over 2020, and that it will deliver 11,800 social homes this year.

"People are getting evicted from properties either because the landlord is selling up, or because they've fallen behind in their rent...", Mike Allen of Focus Ireland told the national radio and television broadcaster RTE.

Allen is a member of the management team of Focus Ireland, a Dublin-based nonprofit organization which provides services for homeless people in Ireland.

He called on the government to do something immediately to keep people in their homes while in the long run building more homes.