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These grim images show more than 400 people of all ages queuing for their dinner outside a soup kitchen.

The shocking pictures, taken three days ago at Dublin’s College Green, emerged as a charity chief warned the housing crisis is “out of control”.

Tony Walsh, of Feed Our Homeless, said: “On Sunday night our team supported well over 400 people – including families and also children – from emergency hotel accommodation at our soup kitchen service.

“This was one of our busiest nights we have had for our volunteers. We set up at 7.15pm and all of our food was gone in just over an hour.

“It’s certainly becoming a challenge for our team each week to keep up with the growing demand for hot food and warm clothing and also support homeless people and families experiencing homelessness.

“It’s very clear to see the crisis is continuing to get a lot worse as the numbers attending our frontline services continue to rise.

“Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy and his Government have failed in their role to tackle or solve the worst housing crisis to hit this State.”

It emerged last week that June was the fifth consecutive month in which homeless figures hit more than 10,000.

These included almost 3,700 children without a permanent place to stay. The shameful tally revealed there were 10,172 people, made up of 6,497 adults and 3,675 youngsters, in emergency accommodation.

Mr Walsh, who stressed around 70% of those living in parks and alongside canals are couples, said: “These figures are shocking and totally unacceptable.

“Our team on the ground are seeing first-hand on a daily basis just how bad this crisis really has gotten.

“We are also seeing an increase in the numbers of homeless couples sleeping rough in tents in parks around the city at night due to the lack of couple beds being made available through the freephone system.

“There are far too many people sleeping rough on the streets due to the lack of emergency beds being put into the system and made available and also due to the emergency State-funded hostels being unsafe.

“Our Taoiseach needs to stop playing the blame game and work with other parties to tackle this out-of-control housing crisis.

“If our Taoiseach calls over 10,000 homeless people and over 3,000 children desperately waiting on a place to call home ‘doing enough’ he really is deluded. We must stop relying on the private rental market to solve this housing crisis.

“Our Housing Minister and his Government must ensure building affordable public housing is their first priority and also build public housing at a quicker pace than it’s currently being built.”

Mr Walsh added more frequent checks of every 15 minutes rather than every hour are needed at hostels to make them feel secure at night.