Limerick sitting on boarded up houses while €28million spent on emergency accommodation

FIGURES obtained from Limerick Council by Aontú councillor Sarah Beasley reveals that almost €17million has been spent...

FIGURES obtained from Limerick Council by Aontú councillor Sarah Beasley reveals that almost €17million has been spent on emergency accommodation in 2025, with Limerick still holding one of the highest rates of vacant homes in the country.

According to the figures revealed at June’s Metropolitan District meeting, the local authority spent €11.3m on emergency accommodation in 2024, €16.9m in 2025, and an estimated €3.7 million in the first quarter of 2026 alone – a total of over €28m in just over two years.

Central Statistics Office (CSO) data published in March 2026, based on 2024 figures, identified the Adare-Rathkeale district in Limerick as the local electoral area (LEA) with the highest vacancy rate in the country at 9.9 per cent — approximately one in every 10 homes sitting empty.

Earlier CSO data from 2023 recorded 1,395 vacant homes across the Adare-Rathkeale LEA, placing it among the highest in the country for the sheer number of vacant properties.

“We are spending €17million a year putting families and single people into emergency accommodation while thousands of homes in Limerick sit empty,” said Cllr Beasley.

“That is not a housing strategy. That is crisis management, and we are paying through the nose for it,” she told the Limerick Post .

The City North representative maintains that these latest figures illustrate exactly the kind of “backwards thinking” that has Ireland in the housing crisis it is in.

“We have empty homes. We have homeless families. We have €17million going out the door every year on hotels, hostels, and B&Bs. The solution is staring us in the face — but instead of tackling vacancy, we keep paying for emergency accommodation as if it is a permanent solution,” she said.

“Every vacant home that sits idle in Limerick is a family that could be housed. We need to get serious about this — and fast.”

Cllr Beasley said she will be raising the matter further at upcoming Council meetings and pressing for a comprehensive plan to address vacancy as a matter of urgency.

The Council’s Housing Support Services explained that the Council allows the accommodation providers of family hub and short-term accommodation hostels to retain payment charges received from clients who have been referred by the Homeless Action Team.

“These payments have been used by the service providers to offset the amount of Section 10 funding required to operate those services,” it said.