Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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1804. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the number of international protection applicants are currently reliant on emergency accommodation or are homeless due to lack of capacity in IPAS centres. [18857/25]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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Ireland currently provides accommodation to approximately 33,000 people applying for international protection, over 9,000 of whom are children with their families.

The State has a legal obligation to assess the claims of those who seek international protection, and in that time, to provide accommodation and supports in line with the Recast Reception Conditions Directive (transposed under SI 230 of 2018, or the "Reception Conditions Regulations").

International protection applicants are not entitled to standard social welfare or housing benefits, and they are not eligible for Local Authority social housing or to avail of Local Authority provided homeless or emergency accommodation.

Our accommodation systems have been forced to expand at a rapid pace over the last two years in response to a sharp increase in need among applicants.

The Department has extended all teams to try to meet this need, expanding our system by over 400% since 20221. Despite this effort, since 2024, 3150 international protection applicants were not offered accommodation.

IPAS teams manage a very limited supply of accommodation, prioritising people with families or who have specific health needs or other vulnerabilities. This means that it is single male applicants are most affected by the lack of offers of accommodation.

IPAS have been making every effort to help anyone who has not been offered accommodation. People who are not offered accommodation are given a weekly allowance of €113.80 per week, an increase of €75 from the standard weekly allowance for asylum-seekers.

While not all unaccommodated applicants are rough-sleeping, IPAS have also put arrangements in place with a range of NGO partners to provide services and outreach to those who are. Drop-in day services are provided so that people can access facilities including hot showers, meals and laundry services. IPAS also makes offers of accommodation to any applicant who is rough-sleeping, identified through outreach that we organise 7 days a week. At the moment, IPAS is able to make offers of accommodation to all applicants who are rough-sleeping.

While the demand for IPAS accommodation remains very high, the rate of increase in new applications for international protection has reduced since October 2024. This means that IPAS is now able to begin to review the cases of people who are awaiting an offer of accommodation and make offers to those who have been waiting longest. This review has reduced the number of unaccommodated people from over 3,500 to 3,150 in recent weeks.

Depending on availability of spaces and numbers of new applicants, we hope to continue to make offers of accommodation to more people over the coming weeks and months.

Our teams continue to manage the limited accommodation available, prioritising people who are assessed as vulnerable or with specific needs.

Further breakdown of the information gathered is available on the below links:

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