I propose to take Questions Nos. 470, 471 and 472 together.
My Department does not fund any homeless service directly but provides funding to housing authorities towards the operational costs of homeless accommodation and related services under Section 10 of the Housing Act, 1988. Under the Exchequer funding arrangements, housing authorities must provide at least 10% of the cost of services from their own resources. Furthermore, housing authorities may also incur additional expenditure on homeless related services outside of the Exchequer funding arrangements provided by my Department. Therefore, the exact amounts spent by housing authorities on homeless services are a matter for individual housing authorities in consultation with the Management Group of the relevant regional joint Homelessness Consultative Forum.
The administration of homeless services is on a regional basis with a lead authority in each region. Each region submits an annual expenditure programme to my Department and my Department approves a funding allocation. Exchequer funding is delegated under a grant agreement with processes in place for certification, review and transparency regarding the publication of financial reports submitted by the lead authorities detailing the regional expenditure for which funding recoupment is sought from my Department.
In 2025, some €449 million in Exchequer funding for homeless services was provided through my Department to housing authorities on a regional basis, which included funding recoupments of €318,905,871 to the Dublin region. The information in Parliamentary Question of 19 May 2026 sets out the amount of Exchequer funding provided to housing authorities during 2025.
My Department is undertaking a review of the 2025 financial reports from each of the nine homeless regions and intend to publish a number of these reports imminently, with the remaining reports to be published once the review process is complete.
The underlying data for the financial report is provided by housing authorities and is not produced by my Department. The expenditure data reported in the financial reports can be subject to change either due to an issue identified directly by a housing authority or through the review process undertaken by my Department. It is a matter for the regional lead authority to resolve any of the issues identified and submit a new financial report to the Department.
The Open Data publication of the financial reports is not available at this time. However, my Department is currently assessing the operational considerations around fulfilling the Open Data Policy with regard to the publication of this data.
My Department does not consider this Parliamentary Question as a formal request for excel versions of the published local authority regional homelessness financial reports. A request for machine readable versions of the reports published on my Department’s website should be submitted to the following email address: opendata@housing.gov.ie
