Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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385. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government to provide figures on the amount allocated to each local authority to provide emergency homeless assistance in 2016; to provide a breakdown on a local authority area basis. [22800/16]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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My Department provides current funding to housing authorities, under Section 10 of the Housing Act 1988, towards the cost of providing accommodation and related services for homeless persons. Housing authorities also provide funding, of at least 10% of the cost of any service they are funding, from within their own resources. Under Section 10 funding arrangements, funding in respect of homeless services is made available on a regional basis and a regional allocation is delegated to a lead-authority in each region. Details of these delegated regional allocations for 2016 are set out in following table.

Delegated Regional Allocation Under Section 10 of the Housing Act, 1988

A total of €53.585m of the €70m made available under Budget 2016 has been allocated under the delegated arrangements, leaving some €16.415m million available for assignment on the basis of further needs arising. It is recognised that, given the current pressures being experienced in the housing sector in many regions, some housing authorities will not be able to control the rate of presentation to homeless services nor programme for expenditure on measures such as the utilisation of hotels as emergency accommodation. Consequently, as happened in previous years, housing authorities have been advised that further Exchequer funding may be recouped outside of the delegated arrangements where additional expenditure arises as a result of increased rates of homeless presentation.