Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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1654. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the reason the midlands homeless region covering the four counties of Longford, Westmeath Laois and Offaly only received 0.84% of the national homeless budget 2016; and his plans to review this to ensure parity based on population and on submissions made by the local authorities, in view of the fact they are severely underfunded for same. [35799/17]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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My Department’s role in relation to homelessness involves the provision of a national framework of policy, legislation and funding to underpin the role of housing authorities in addressing homelessness at local level.  In accordance with section 37(2) of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009, statutory responsibility in relation to the provision of homeless services, including accommodation, rests with individual housing authorities.  Therefore, my Department does not fund any service directly, but provides funding to housing authorities towards the operational costs of homeless services.

The purposes for which housing authorities may incur expenditure in addressing homelessness are prescribed in section 10 of the Housing Act 1988.  Under the ‘Section 10’ funding arrangements in place between my Department and housing authorities, Exchequer funding is provided on a regional basis, whereby it is delegated to a lead-authority in each region.  The counties of Laois, Longford, Offaly and Westmeath comprise the Midlands Region, for which Westmeath County Council is the agreed regional lead-authority.

In accordance with sections 38 and 39 of the Act, a Homelessness Consultative Forum, which in the Midlands includes service providers such as Midlands Simon Community and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and a Statutory Management Group, which includes representatives of the Health Service Executive, advise and assist housing authorities, inter alia, in the configuration and provision of homeless services in their area.  My Department has no function in relation to such operational decisions. 

The provision of funding from my Department to the regions is based on a programme of scheduled services which each region submits to my Department at the outset of each year.  Allocations are therefore based on expected need rather than county populations, which would not be a sound basis for the provision of such funding given the varying scales of homelessness nationally. 

In 2016, the Midlands Region received an initial allocation of €800,000 towards their programme of scheduled services.  Supplementary to the delegated allocation, my Department considers the recoupment of any additional costs arising as a result of increased rates of homeless presentation, such as the costs of temporary accommodation for families, etc. (my Department has provided such reassurances to the various authorities in this regard over the last two years and again this year). Taking these costs into account, a total of €1,109,748 was recouped to the region by end-2016.