Dublin city centre will be taken over by a protest march tomorrow highlighting the current homeless crisis.

Trade unions and housing charities will call on the Government to declare a national emergency.

The latest statistics show there are more than 2,000 homeless children in this country. Some have even been forced to sleep on blow-up beds in adult hostels.

Siptu’s National Campaigns and Equality Organiser Karan O’Loughlin said the State needed to take extraordinary measures, and to declare the homeless crisis an emergency.

“(Declaring it as an emergency) speeds up the tendering and planning process,” she said.

“The amount of investment that’s needed to try to get the problem under control would mean a lot of the new builds would have to be put out to tender in a process that’s quite slow.

“When you declare it as an emergency situation, that clears the Government to act faster.”

Tomorrow’s march is organised by the National Homeless and Housing Coalition. It will begin outside the Department of Environment offices at the Custom House at 2pm and continue on to the GPO for a rally.