Approved Housing Bodies (AHBs) are independent, not-for-profit organisations. They provide affordable rented housing for people who cannot afford to pay private sector rents or buy their own homes; or for particular groups, such as older people or homeless people.
The Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority (AHBRA) was established on 1 February 2021 to regulate the sector and to monitor AHBs performance against approved standards provided for in the Housing (Regulation of Approved Housing Bodies) Act 2019. Part of AHBRA's function is to register organisations as AHBs and to maintain and publish the AHB register. There are currently 450 deemed AHBs on the register which can be accessed here: www.ahbregulator.ie/registration/the-register/
Prior to the establishment of AHBRA, the AHB register was maintained by my Department. The AHB register is a living document that is updated when necessary and historical copies of the register are not maintained by my Department. In 2020 prior to the transfer of the register to AHBRA, my Department undertook a project to confirm the number of active AHBs on the register. In March 2020 there were 555 AHBs registered with my Department.
Details on the funding provided to individual (AHBs) is not readily available within my Department. My Department does not fund AHBs directly, rather, the funding is primarily provided directly to local authorities, who in turn advance the funding to the AHBs, as appropriate. However, overall, for the last five years, over €2.7 billion was provided by my Department to the local authorities in respect of a range of AHB funded schemes as follows:
|
Year
|
Funding €m
|
|
2018
|
348
|
|
2019
|
430
|
|
2020
|
515
|
|
2021
|
633
|
|
2022
|
797
|
|
Total
|
2,723
|
Additionally, in respect of homeless expenditure, financial reports from each of the homeless regions, setting out expenditure on homeless services are published on my Department’s website at the following link: www.gov.ie/en/collection/80ea8-homelessness-data/#local-authority-regional-financial-reports
My Department publishes comprehensive programme level statistics on a quarterly basis on social housing delivery activity by local authorities and (AHBs) in each local authority area. This data is available to the end of 2022, and is published on the statistics page of my Department’s website, at the following link: www.gov.ie/en/collection/6060e-overall-social-housing-provision/
AHBs are independent organisations and as such my Department is not involved in their daily operations, and therefore does not maintain statistics regarding the number of units owned by, or the staffing levels of, AHBs. Certain information in this regard is collected by AHBRA as part of its annual monitoring programme. This information is published as part of its sectoral analysis report and the report for 2022 can be accessed on the AHBRA website at the following link: www.ahbregulator.ie/app/uploads/2023/05/AHBRA-Sectoral-Analysis.pdf
Data on the numbers of housing units owned by individual bodies would be available from the AHBs directly.
