Councils spend €35 million more than estimated on homelessness

Most of the overspend related to Dublin City Council (Niall Carson/PA)

Local authorities spent €35 million more than expected on homeless services last year, according to the latest figures.

The Department of Housing released the end-of-year data for nine regions on Friday.

The figures show how local authorities spent on resettlement supports, homeless prevention, emergency accommodation and other services.

Across the country, total expenditure was €35,320,196 higher than the initial estimates for the year.

Most of the significant overspend related to emergency accommodation in the form of B&Bs, primarily concentrated in Dublin.

In Dublin City Council, more than €20 million was spent on hotels and B&Bs than initially provided for, while approximately €9 million extra was spent on other private emergency accommodation for single people experiencing homelessness.

Cork City Council spent almost €2.6 million more than estimated on B&Bs across the year.

Similarly, Louth County Council had an additional spend of almost €1.2 million on such accommodation.

In the midlands, there was a €1.5 million overspend on B&Bs in Offaly, Longford, Laois and Westmeath.

The overall figures also provide a column for revised estimates, but this was not applicable for many regions.

In the South West, the initial estimate was approximately €21.4 million but revised down to €18.9 million.

The true expenditure in the region was more than €24.1 million.

Across the nine regions, the local authorities had estimated to spend €305,511,191 but by the end of 2023, had paid out €340,831,387.

Each local authority is able to recoup up to 90% of what it spends on households experiencing homelessness from the Department of Housing.

There were 13,866 people accessing emergency accommodation nationwide, according to the latest data available – which is for the final week in March.

This breaks down to 9,719 adults and 4,147 child dependents.