Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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On the 27th March 2024 Government agreed a new Comprehensive Accommodation Strategy (CAS) for International Protection applicants. The strategy seeks to address the current accommodation shortfall, while reforming the system over the longer term to ensure the State will always be able to meet its international commitments.

Accommodation in the new strategy will be delivered through the following multi-strand approach:

1. Use of State land for prefabricated and modular units
2. Conversion of commercial buildings
3. Targeted purchase of medium and larger turnkey properties
4. Design and build of new Reception and Integration Centres
5. Upgrading of IPAS Centres

The multi-strand approach focuses on both increasing State owned permanent capacity, and the upgrading of additional contingency accommodation, developed to specific national standards, to build an effective system to meet the new realities of increasing need while enabling the State to discharge its duty to meet the material reception conditions of IP Applicants, according to the guiding principles of the White Paper.

In order to deal with the demand led nature of the system, the commissioning of emergency commercial accommodation will continue to be a feature in the short to medium term. This accommodation will be contracted on shorter-term basis and if application numbers drop, can be decommissioned as contracts expire. It is planned that as new State owned and permanent commercial accommodation comes on stream the use of this emergency accommodation will reduce.

Once sufficient State owned accommodation has been delivered over the coming years, and emergency accommodation reduced substantially, the Government may, at that point, seek to reduce further the proportion of remaining permanent accommodation delivered by commercial providers and move to a fully or predominately State owned system

In terms of new accommodation numbers the table below details the proposed various accommodation types, capacity and ownership.

Accommodation Type	Bed Capacity	Ownership
Reception and Integration Centres and Accommodation Centres, at or above national standards	Up to 13,000	State Owned
In-Community Accommodation for vulnerable persons, at or above national standards	Up to 1,000	State Owned, operated in partnership with NGOs.
Contingency Accommodation, at national standards	Up to 11,000	Commercial Providers
Emergency Accommodation	Up to 10,000	Commercial Providers

An Expression of Interest (EOI) process has been launched by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth for the sourcing of suitable properties for acquisition or lease as International Protection accommodation.

As this is a live procurement process with commercially sensitive information DCEDIY cannot, at this current time, comment on the number of submissions received; the average accommodation capacity; and the average cost per unit of properties contained in the EOIs as requested.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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As of 12 May, there are over 30,000 people accommodated in the International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS) system as a whole (of whom 7,356 are children) compared with approximately 8,700 people at the end of February 2022. Together with Beneficiaries of Temporary Protection displaced by the war in Ukraine, this means that Ireland is now accommodating over 102,000 people in state-supported accommodation.

There are currently 7 state-owned centres which have been in place since 2016 or earlier.

Capacity at these centres stands at approximately 1200 people.

The average cost of State-owned accommodation is as set out below:

State Owned Accommodation – Average Costs Per Person Per Day – 2021 - 2024

Year	2021	2022	2023	2024 (to date)
Year	2021	2022	2023	2024 (to date)
Average	€12.31	€28.30	€26.95	€29.93

In addition, the State currently operates the following:

• 49 IPAS centres, National IP Reception centre and City West Transit Hub which have a combined accommodation IP capacity of c.8000
• The remaining bulk of accommodation is provided by emergency accommodation

The accommodation system is saturated at the moment, so additional tented accommodation is being provided by the State at a number of locations.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 541 and 542 together.

As of 12 May, there are over 30,000 people accommodated in the International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS) system as a whole (of whom 7,356 are children) compared with approximately 8,700 people at the end of February 2022. Together with Beneficiaries of Temporary Protection displaced by the war in Ukraine, this means that Ireland is now accommodating over 102,000 people in state-supported accommodation.

The average cost of accommodating an IP applicant in all IPAS accommodation (including State-owned and private) is as set out in the table below. This includes all accommodation and ancillary costs such as facilities management and other related expenditure.

The average cost per person in privately contracted accommodation in 2024 to date has been €82.97.

Please note that the average cost per night fluctuates due to fluidity in applicant numbers and centres.

All IPAS Accommodation - Average Costs Per Person Per Day - Years 2021-2023

Year	2021	2022	2023
Average	€82	€57	€76.80