Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Under Section 159 of the Local Government Act 2001, each Chief Executive is responsible for the staffing and organisational arrangements necessary for carrying out the functions of the local authority for which he/she is responsible including progressing appointments that have been sanctioned by my Department as appropriate. My Department oversees workforce planning for the local government sector, including the monitoring of local government sector employment levels. To this end, my Department gathers aggregate quarterly data on staff numbers in each local authority on a whole time equivalent basis. However, granular data, in terms of the detailed breakdown of the numbers and grades of staff allocated to specific work areas within local authorities is not collected and consequently is not available in my Department. This information would be available from each local authority.

Details on the number of households qualified for social housing support in each local authority administrative area is provided in the annual statutory Summary of Social Housing Assessments (SSHA). The SSHA provides a breakdown of categories such as age, household size and household composition.? In 2023, there were 58,824 qualified for social housing whose need had not yet been met nationally. In relation to Galway County and Galway City, there were 1,257 and 1,694 households respectively, whose needs had not been meet in 2023.

The most recently published summary for all?local authority areas was conducted in November 2023 and is available on my Department’s website at the following link: www.gov.ie/en/publication/0dad4-summary-of-social-housing-assessments-2023-key-findings/.

The published summaries for each SSHA since 2013 are available on the following link: www.gov.ie/en/collection/62486-summary-of-social-housing-assessments/.

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 February 2024. The reports are collated on a regional basis and are available on my Department's website at the following link: www.gov.ie/en/collection/80ea8-homelessness-data/ and are also published to the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform's open data portal data.gov.ie/.