My Department provides funding under the suite of Housing Adaptation Grants for Older People and People with a Disability, to assist people in private houses to make their accommodation more suitable for their needs. The grants include the Housing Adaptation Grant for People with a Disability, the Mobility Aids Grant and the Housing Aid for Older People, which are 80% funded by my Department, with a 20% contribution from the resources of the local authority. The detailed administration of this scheme including assessment, approval and prioritisation, is the responsibility of local authorities. Local authorities receive an overall allocation, with the responsibility for the apportionment between the three schemes being a matter for each authority given their knowledge of local need.
My Department's approach each year is to issue a single full year allocation to each local authority, so they can plan and implement the grants programme. Over the course of the year, my Department works closely with the local authorities to monitor spend and to achieve a full drawdown of the available funding. This means that if underspends arise on the part of some local authorities, they can be redistributed to other authorities which have high levels of grant activity.
The requests for additional funding received from local authorities in the years 2022 and 2023 were approved by my Department. Details of initial annual allocations and subsequent local authority drawdown for the years in question, including where additional funding has been sanctioned or where allocations have been underspent, can be found on my Department's website at the following link:
www.housing.gov.ie/housing/statistics/social-and-affordble/other-local-authority-housing-scheme-statistics
My Department does not hold collated data in respect of applications approved by local authorities or any backlogs which cannot be met from existing funding. This information may be available directly from the local authorities.
