Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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1135. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government further to Parliamentary Questions on Policy or Legislation of 16 October 2025, if he intends to provide additional funding to Monaghan County Council for the purpose of providing additional housing adaptation grants in 2025. [60056/25]

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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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.

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. Monaghan County Council received an Exchequer allocation of over €1.63 million for 2025, an increase of 35% on the original allocation in 2024. Budget 2026 provides for a further increase of €30 million for the scheme, bringing the total available Exchequer funding for 2026 to almost €130 million, continuing the year-on-year increases since 2014.

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. My Department recently considered and approved a request from Monaghan County Council for a further Exchequer allocation provision of €425,000 for 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.