261. Deputy Catherine Connolly asked the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration when the policy of not offering accommodation to international protection applications will cease. [53981/25]

262. Deputy Catherine Connolly asked the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration the number of international protection applicants who have not been offered accommodation on arrival in each month, to date in 2025. [53982/25]

263. Deputy Catherine Connolly asked the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration if he will provide details of the rough sleeper verification process by which an international protection applicant not offered accommodation would receive an offer of accommodation. [53983/25]

I propose to take Questions Nos. 261, 262 and 263 together.

Ireland is currently accommodating almost 33,000 people seeking international protection in 319 International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS) centres around the country.

Due to severe shortages of accommodation over recent years, from December 2023, the State was unable to offer accommodation to all people seeking international protection.

My Department manages a limited supply of accommodation, prioritising people with families or who have specific health needs or other vulnerabilities. This means that single male applicants are most affected by accommodation pressures.

From January to August 2025, the following numbers of single male applicants were not offered accommodation on arrival. Most of these applicants whose case remains active have subsequently been made an offer of accommodation, as outlined below.

People who are not offered accommodation are given a weekly allowance of €113.80 per week, an increase of €75 more than the standard weekly allowance for asylum-seekers.

While most unaccommodated people are not rough-sleeping, IPAS has arrangements in place with a range of NGO partners to provide drop-in day services for unaccommodated people who are. This means people can access facilities including hot showers, meals and laundry services.

IPAS can also makes offers of accommodation to any applicant who is rough sleeping, identified through outreach that is organised 7 days a week through a homeless NGO partner organisation.

While the demand for IPAS accommodation remains high, the reduced rate of new applications has meant that since March 2025, IPAS has been able to review the cases of people who were awaiting an offer of accommodation and make offers to those who have been waiting longest.

As part of the review process, we are also identifying people who no longer require accommodation. They are removed from the list of people waiting for an offer, speeding up the process for people on the list who still need accommodation.

This review has reduced the number of unaccommodated people from over 3,500 in March 2025, to 613 in October 2025.

This means that eligible people who applied for international protection during 2023 and 2024 and the earlier part of 2025 have now all received an offer of accommodation.

Depending on availability of spaces and numbers of new applicants, we will continue to make offers of accommodation to more people over the coming weeks and months.

Updated information on unaccommodated international protection applicants is published online at Gov.ie: www.gov.ie/en/publication/ec5f2-statistics-on-international-protection-applicants-not-offered-accommodation/?referrer=https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/e202e-statistics-on-international-protection-applicants-not-offered-accommodation/.