4,500 empty asylum seeker beds can't be offered to 500 male applicants sleeping rough, PAC told

The department’s head of international protection, David Delaney, said that even if all 534 applicants sleeping homeless at present applied for a bed, the department wouldn’t be able to oblige. Stock Picture: Leah Farrell / RollingNews.ie

There are roughly 4,500 empty beds free for either Ukrainian nationals or asylum seekers at present, but they cannot be offered to more than 500 male applicants sleeping on the streets, an Oireachtas committee has heard.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) heard that there are about 53,000 beds available in the system at the moment.

Just under 36,000 are designated for international protection, with the remainder set aside for refugees from the Russia/Ukraine conflict. Of those, some 4,500 are vacant.

However, many of them are unavailable for use — either due to the need for refurbishment or their placement as spare units within family complexes — officials from the Department of Justice told the PAC on Thursday.

“Obviously, it’s something we are not happy about,” secretary general Oonagh McPhillips told the committee.

The department, which reassumed responsibility for the asylum seeker process last May, has "people arriving every day".

"We have to do vulnerability assessments on them, and we have to retain a number of beds to respond to that," she said.

Under questioning from People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy, the department’s head of international protection, David Delaney, said that even if all 534 applicants sleeping homeless at present applied for a bed, the department wouldn’t be able to oblige.

'Vulnerability triage'

“Even if we offered a bed and it was accepted, we wouldn’t be able to give them all a bed. Straight off, we wouldn’t be able to fulfil that,” he said, noting that a further 120 men are seeking asylum each week on average — meaning offers of accommodation are subject to “vulnerability triage”.

The committee heard that expenditure on the provision of accommodation for Ukrainian nationals has fallen by more than 50% since 2024.

At that time, the State was paying more than €1.4bn towards accommodating more than 60,000 Ukrainians directly. 

Ms McPhillips told the committee that the figure has now fallen to a budget of just €607m for 2026.

She said that large savings had been made as the State moved away from a reliance on commercial accommodation, while many of those Ukrainians living in Ireland who were working here had moved to source their own living arrangements independently.

“As the pressure began to reduce on both teams since 2024, great progress has been made on improving governance and achieving better value for money for the State,” she said.

The committee was further told that 42,500 Ukrainians continue to be accommodated within Irish households via the accommodation recognition payment scheme — up from 34,500 in 2024, when expenditure for that scheme was €141.5m.

That scheme is set to expire at the end of this coming March, the committee heard, though a further extension may be approved by the justice minister.