Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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1485. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the average waiting time for a housing adaptation grant to be approved; the average amount awarded, per local authority area, in tabular form. [41830/25]

Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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1502. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government following the decision by Limerick city and county council to pause all applications for housing adaptation grants for older people and disabled people, with the exception of housing adaption grants, mobility aid grants and emergency applications under the housing aid for older people, due to a lack of funding; if he will allocate additional funding to ensure that applications currently in the system will be processed in 2025; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42017/25]

Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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1671. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if he will consider the possibility of making more funding available to local authorities to administer the housing adaption and housing aid for the elderly schemes in all future years. [44058/25]

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 1485, 1502 and 1671 together.

My Department provides funding under the suite of Housing Adaptation Grants for Older People and Disabled People, to assist those in private houses to make their accommodation more suitable for their needs. The suite of grants, which include the Housing Adaptation Grant for Disabled People, the Mobility Aids Grant and the Housing Aid for Older People Grant, are funded by my Department with a contribution from the local authority. The detailed administration of the scheme including assessment, approval, prioritisation and apportionment is the responsibility of local authorities. My Department does not hold collated data in respect of average waiting times for grant approval or grant amounts awarded. This information may be available directly from the local authorities.

The Exchequer funding available for these grants in 2025 has been increased substantially by €25 million to €99.5 million, or over €117 million when accounting for the local authority contribution, continuing the year on year increases since 2014. Limerick City & County Council received an Exchequer allocation of almost €4.4 million, an increase of 37% on the original allocation in 2024. As part of the annual budgetary process, consideration will be given to increasing this funding in future years in line with the commitments under Housing for All and the Programme for Government.

My Department works closely with the local authorities to monitor spend and to achieve a full drawdown of available funding. This means that any underspends that arise on the part of any local authority can be redistributed to other authorities which have high levels of grant activity and my Department makes every effort to redistribute such funding throughout the year. Limerick City & County Council recently requested additional funding from my Department for 2025. My Department has now considered and approved a further Exchequer allocation provision of over €592,511 in 2025.

My Department advises local authorities annually that, as far as practicable, a percentage of the allocation under the schemes should be ring fenced in respect of any emergency applications which might arise under these schemes during the course of the year. Consequently, all local authorities manage their schemes to ensure access to the grants programme is maintained to the extent possible throughout the year in the highest priority cases and further information in this regard would be available directly from the local authorities.