My Department’s role in relation to homelessness involves the provision of a national framework of policy, legislation and funding to underpin the role of local authorities in addressing homelessness at a local level.
Statutory responsibility in relation to the provision of accommodation and related services for homeless persons rests with individual local authorities. Decisions on the assessment of households for homeless services, the most appropriate form of such support, and the allocation of that support are a matter for the local authority concerned.
My Department currently gathers and publishes data on a monthly basis on the number of homeless persons accommodated in emergency accommodation funded and overseen by local authorities. These reports are based on data provided by local authorities, produced through the Pathway Accommodation & Support System (PASS).
The monthly homelessness report includes details of individuals, families and the dependants of these families who accessed emergency accommodation during the relevant count week of the month in question. The most recently published data is in respect of January 2026. The reports are collated on a regional basis and are available on my Department's website at the following link: www.gov.ie/en/department-of-housing-local-government-and-heritage/collections/homelessness-data, and are also published to the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation's open data portal: https://data.gov.ie/.
My Department also publishes quarterly progress reports which are based on quarterly performance reports submitted by the nine regional lead authorities responsible for the administration of homeless services at local level. The quarterly performance reports include regional information on the duration of stay data for single and family households. The duration of stay data is reported as six-monthly bands ranging from less than six months to more than 24 months. These bands refer to consecutive stays in emergency accommodation and are based on a point-in-time count, informed by emergency accommodation usage on the last night in the quarter.
The most recently published data is in respect of Q4 2025. Progress and performance reports are available on my Department’s website at the following link: www.gov.ie/en/department-of-housing-local-government-and-heritage/collections/homelessness-data/.
The Housing Plan, 'Delivering Homes, Building Communities', commits to further enhancing reporting in relation to the use of local authority homeless emergency accommodation to allow for an expansion of the information gathered and increased analysis of the reasons driving new homeless presentations and the progress being made to support households to exit emergency accommodation to a tenancy.
