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 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 including on prevention measures are a matter for individual housing authorities in consultation with the Management Group of the relevant regional joint Homelessness Consultative Forum.
While responsibility for the provision of accommodation for homeless persons rests with individual housing authorities, the administration of homeless services is organised on a regional basis, with nine administrative regions in place. Each region submits an annual expenditure programme to my Department and my Department approves a funding allocation. County Meath is in the Mid East region, along with Kildare and Wicklow, for the purposes of homeless administration, with Kildare County Council as the lead authority for the region. In 2025, some €17m in Exchequer funding was provided to the Mid East region towards expenditure incurred on the Mid East regional homeless services programme.
Financial reports from each of the homeless regions including the Mid East region, setting out expenditure on homeless services including prevention are published on my Department's website at the following link;
https://www.housing.gov.ie/housing/homelessness/other/homelessness-data.
