The Department of Housing is seeking additional funding of more than €152 million this year to meet the cost of providing accommodation for people who are homeless.
The department had originally made provision in its 2025 budget for paying out a total of €327.81 million, including €25 million in capital funding, with respect of accommodation for those who are homeless.
New official figures, published on Thursday, show it will need €480.01 million to pay for such accommodation, an additional requirement of €152.2 million for this purpose.
Overall the Department of Housing is seeking additional funding, or a supplementary estimate, of nearly €299 million over its original budget for this year.
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This includes an additional €73.6 million for local authority housing and €84 million in current expenditure on its social housing programme.
Latest figures released at the end of October show there were 16,614 people in emergency accommodation during the week of September 22nd to 28th, a record-high figure.
Separately the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport is seeking an additional €42.6 million in funding over its original budget for this year.
This includes an additional €45 million in respect of the national broadband plan, however, the total amount is offset by savings in other areas bringing the total additional money needed to €42.6 million.
In all, the total expenditure in this area this year is €445 million.
There is also an additional €4 million for the State’s grant to broadcaster RTÉ, bringing the full amount for RTÉ this year to €187 million.
An additional €8 million in funding is needed by the department for what is described as “major sporting events”.
Overall Government departments will need nearly €2.4 billion in additional funding this year to cover costs that exceeded their initial budgets for 2025.
The Department of Education alone will require a supplementary estimate of €567 million while the Department of Health will need an additional €302 million.
The Department of Social Protection, the Department of Children and the Department of Transport will each require more than €200 million in additional funding to be approved by the Dáil.
Figures for the Department of Education indicate that €180 million extra in funding will be needed over its initial estimate to cover the salaries of primary schoolteachers and €135 million more to pay the wages of special needs assistants. An additional €96 million will be needed for the school transport service.
The Department of Health said earlier this week that under a funding deal agreed with the Department of Public Expenditure last year, €250 million was to be generated through savings in the health service.
“This has been challenging to achieve in 2025, in addition to the substantial €633 million cumulative savings target already incorporated into the 2025 budget allocation,” it said.
The Department of Health also said it would provide €40 million in funding to ensure that the accumulated accounting deficits of voluntary hospitals do not increase during 2025. However, the money is conditional on the hospitals agreeing reforms and introducing new financial information systems, about which some institutions are not happy.
“It is a requirement that the voluntary hospitals implement improved governance arrangements and stricter adherence to expenditure and workforce limits,” the department said.
“This includes reforms in areas such as financial governance measures, recruitment controls, implementation of new rostering arrangements, improvements in utilisation of diagnostic equipment, agreement on implementation of national IT systems.”
