Housing Minister Simon Coveney has said the State’s goal must be to put housing and homelessness charities out of business.

Speaking at the launch of the Peter McVerry Trust’s strategic plan, he said crisis accommodation would always be necessary, but could only ever work as a short-term solution.

He said the ultimate goal must be to leave charities with nothing to do.

“Of course we need to deal with the emergency challenge, but the medium-term challenge must be to put emergency shelters out of business, almost, as opposed to increasing year-on-year the amount of emergency beds that we have.

“If we continue to do that, we’re failing.”