The 22 modular homes to be built by Dublin City Council as emergency accommodation for homeless people will not be finished until at least the middle of this month.

The homes were originally due to be completed by Christmas but, according to the contractor, poor weather and protests at the site led to delays.

Mike Allen, director of advocacy at Focus Ireland, said that it meant 22 families have been left without their emergency accommodation.

"It isn't entirely down to those protesters because it runs into other problems, which I wouldn't have the details about - bad weather and so on," he said.

"But the first thing that slowed the whole process down was a small number of people decided, for reasons that were never particularly clear, that they were against this.

"And they thought that their right to be against it trumped the right of the 22 families to have decent emergency accommodation over Christmas."