Inaction on tenant-in-situ funding 'puts families at risk of homelessness' 

The correspondence said no circulars have been issued to councils on extending the scheme or setting targets for the number of homes to be acquired.

However, in a letter to Housing Minister James Browne, Sinn Féin’s Eoin Ó Broin said extending the tenant in situ scheme this year is an “urgent matter” — particularly given the country’s housing crisis.

“No new tenant-in-situ acquisitions can take place until Government has agreed the targets for each local authority for 2025,” Mr Ó Broin’s letter said.

The absence of these targets is causing a significant issue in many local authority areas as requests from landlords this year are currently being put on hold.

Under the scheme, local authorities are able to buy up properties in situations where tenants are facing eviction, but only if those tenants are availing of supports such Hap and RAS.

Mr Ó Broin said he found it “hard to understand” why the previous government did not set targets for tenant in situ acquisitions last year.

According to Mr Ó Broin, some landlords are already withdrawing from the scheme due to delays in processing applications and any further uncertainty could lead to further evictions of tenants into homelessness.

“It is taking far too long to get properties through the process. Some landlords are already withdrawing from the scheme because of these delays and anything that adds additional uncertainty or delay puts tenants in the private rental sector with eviction notices at risk of homelessness,” he said.

Mr Ó Broin is urging Mr Browne to bring a memo to Cabinet on the tenant-in-situ scheme “as a matter of urgency”.

Threshold's national advocacy manager Ann-Marie O’Reilly said the agency recognises that the Government is working to set the targets and budget for this year, but “given the emergency nature of the scheme — in that it can be the final option available to prevent homelessness — we hope to see the targets and budgets agreed as soon as possible.”

Last year, the Government funded local authorities to purchase a total of 1,500 homes under the scheme.

The latest social housing figures show 1,296 homes were acquired by local authorities across the country, as of September 2024. Final figures for the last three months of 2024 are not yet available.

Calls to address the delays to the tenant in situ scheme come amid a significant focus on housing in recent days, after the Government failed to reach its housing targets for 2024.

Despite repeated pledges from the Taoiseach and Tánaiste during the general election campaign that as many as 40,000 houses would be built in 2024, figures from the Central Statistics Office showed only 30,330 homes were finished. 

Taoiseach Micheál Martin said his party did not give false housing figures before the election and that the expected number of completions were “a genuine belief” at the time.

Speaking on RTÉ’s This Week, Mr Martin said Fianna Fáil was repeatedly told that the final quarter figures would be much stronger, but this was not the case. He said: 

It was not in any way a premeditated attempt to mislead anybody. There was a genuine belief that figures would come in strong in the last quarter.

Mr Martin said he would not make any projections for housing completions this year but an assessment would be made in due course.

In an interview with the 'Irish Examiner' on Saturday, Mr Martin promised that nothing — including the abolition of Rent Pressure Zones (RPZs) — would be off the table to try and solve the housing crisis.