More than 100 Dublin tenants who are at risk of homelessness cannot be considered for the tenant-in-situ scheme due to delays in Government funding allocations, Dublin City Council’s head of housing has said.
The scheme, introduced two years ago, allows local authorities to buy homes from landlords who have given notice to quit to tenants in receipt of housing State supports such as the housing assistance payment (HAP) or the rental accommodation scheme (RAS).
However, the scheme has been in abeyance since the start of the year, with the new Minster for Housing James Browne reviewing its terms.
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Mick Mulhearn, the council’s assistant chief executive with responsibility for housing on Monday night told city councillors that notice of potential changes to the scheme was issued to the council on March 5th, but the council had no confirmation of its funding allocation.
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While formal notification of changes to the scheme had not yet been received by Mr Mulhearn said, correspondence from the Department of Housing indicated a number of significant amendments would be enforced.
Where previously local authorities were issued with a target for the number of homes to buy, an allocation of money would now be made to each city or county council. The department indicated there would be “a total capital allocation now for tenant institute nationally of €325 million,” Mr Mulhearn said.
The city council had in 2024 spent €117 million on 261 tenant-in-situ and 83 vacant property acquisitions, which would alone account for more than one third of this year’s national fund.
The council would not be permitted to buy a property that required any refurbishment work, and the home must be in the HAP or RAS system for at least two years. “That’s the property not the tenant,” Mr Mulhearn said. It was the council’s view it was the tenant’s need that should be the deciding factor. “It’s the person who you’re trying to prevent from going into homelessness,” he said “it should really be the person not the property” that is assessed.
The council would also be expected to prioritise “large” families; families in emergency accommodation for more than 12 months; people identified for the “housing first” programme which caters for long-term homeless people with addiction, mental health issues or other complex needs; or young people leaving care.
“There has to be some criteria nationally applied when it’s not an unlimited amount of money,” but there should be “some loosening of that to allow certain particular circumstances to be taken into account” he said.
“To date we’ve had so far in 2025 we’ve had 104 inquiries and obviously we haven’t been able to make any progress on those until we get greater clarity,” Mr Mulhearn said.
Councillors of all parties agreed a Sinn Féin motion calling on the Minister to restore the scheme without restrictions and “urging him to provide Dublin City Council with the maximum amount of flexibility on the operation of the scheme and adequate funding to support tenants at risk of homelessness”.
