€373 million announced as available for drawdown under the 2026 Second Hand Social Housing Acquisitions Programme
- Published on: 24 February 2026
- Last updated on: 24 February 2026
Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, James Browne TD today announced that he was making €373 million available to be drawn down by local authorities under the 2026 Second Hand Social Housing Acquisitions Programme.
This funding exceeds (by more than €80m) the €290m funding drawn down by local authorities in 2025.
Today’s funding includes €150 million ring fenced for acquisitions that will support households to exit long-term homeless accommodation and €50m for Approved Housing Bodies (AHB) to provide accommodation for elderly or disabled persons and care leavers.
Minister Browne emphasised:
“Today we are making significant funding available to Local Authorities for housing acquisitions – at €373 million, this is an increase of €80m compared to what they drew down in 2025 under the programme.
“The acquisitions programme is, rightly, targeted at pressing need and largely operates as a last resort for our councils to utilise in order to ensure that households in the most precarious of housing situations can be protected. The first response to housing need should always be to build more social housing and, thankfully, we are seeing many of our local authorities begin to gain the much-needed momentum in that regard, but I am driving on with the policies at Government level that means that the path is clearer for that delivery.”
“As we build more social homes, the need for housing acquisitions should drop away as the overall pool of social housing increases.”
The Minister added that €157 million will be available to local authorities to use at their discretion, including for tenancy sustainment or tenant-in-situ acquisitions.
There will also be a contingency of almost €16 million withheld, to support local authorities likely to draw down their full allocations and with capacity to progress further acquisitions and draw down funding from the Department this year.
As last year, local authorities will be authorised to commit up to 30% of the value of this year’s base allocation for acquisitions that will likely only complete in 2027, continuing the multi-annual approach to funding activity.
Finally, the eligibility criteria introduced in 2025 for tenant in situ acquisitions will be retained and a further condition added that Tenant-in-Situ acquisitions will not be permitted for households that have refused a reasonable offer of local authority or AHB social housing accommodation following receipt of Notice of Termination (NoT).
ENDS
Document below details:
- Second hand acquisition, 2026 allocations for Local Authorities
- 2025 Preliminary Data on acquisitions output (subject to final validation)
- Local Authority ratio of new build social homes to second-Hand acquisitions 2020-2024
