No formal agreements around €70m in homeless spending

Covid-19 exacerbated the need for supply of emergency accommodation and raised several additional challenges in relation to social distancing in existing, congregated settings.

An audit of Dublin City Council has found that 10% of expenditure by voluntary bodies involved in homeless services - worth some €70m - were not supported by service-level agreements (SLAs).

The audit, published by the Department of Housing, outlines how a spend of €199.6m was incurred by the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive (DRHE) in the delivery of homeless services last year.

A total of €156.7m - equating to 79% of 2020 expenditure - was incurred by voluntary bodies and private providers of emergency accommodation, but according to the report: "Audit procedures indicated that 10% of voluntary bodies’ expenditure of €70m were not supported by SLAs. The remaining emergency private providers with expenditure of €86.7m had either a contract, lease, chief executive order and/or rolling agreement in place but no SLAs. I am informed that SLAs are currently being put in place for all service providers."

In his response, Dublin City Chief Executive, Owen Keegan, said in April this year the DRHE management team had begun working with a consultant to "re-frame the existing NQSF (National Quality Standards Framework) and SLA processes to cater for private operators of emergency accommodation (PEAs)".

He said the new service level agreements "will be put in place with immediate effect for all private operators of emergency accommodation. The process of ensuring that all SLAs are in place and reviewed as necessary will be strengthened by the DRHE management team."

Competitive procurement procedures

The audit also looked at issues over competitive procurement procedures when it came to the selection and subsequent appointment of all sampled direct homeless private service providers working on behalf of the DRHE, and which cost a total last year of €86.7m.

Dublin City Council has now engaged KPMG to address the procurement issue. 

According to Owen Keegan in his response, the "lease/refurbishment/managed process" had managed to provide additional capacity at a time when little had been available.

"The extent of the lack of emergency accommodation in 2018, was evidenced when the DRHE had emergency accommodation for up to 740 families who self-sourced accommodation in hotels, paid for at full commercial nightly rates, across the greater Dublin area," he said. 

In some extreme cases large families slept in Garda stations at this time. An additional 30/40 single persons were unable to obtain any emergency accommodation nightly and this was substantiated with the nightly distribution of between 30/40 sleeping bags to rough sleepers.

He said the onset of Covid-19 exacerbated the need for supply of emergency accommodation and raised several additional challenges in relation to social distancing in existing, congregated settings, but the coordinated response, with the HSE and others, had been successful in limiting the spread of the disease.

Last March the DRHE engaged KPMG to conduct a "market-sounding exercise with current and potential providers of emergency accommodation services and to outline to the DRHE the options available to it for securing emergency accommodation while adhering fully with Public Procurement guidelines," he said.

Mr Keegan said the KPMG report identifies the pros/cons of three options the DRHE could use to source emergency accommodation, specifically; Enhancing the current Expressions of Interest system; Single-supplier Framework to replace the current system and ensure a more formal process is in place in line with National and EU Procurement rules; and a Multi-supplier framework to replace the current system and ensure a more formal process is in place in line with National and EU Procurement rules.

He said the DRHE then employed Grenville Consultants in June 2021 to help develop a new procurement strategy "that will address current weaknesses in working with private management companies and give us a framework to draw from in the future, and importantly allow us to act in urgent situations to prevent deaths on the streets".