Dublin City Council still in the dark on 2026 tenant-in-situ funding
Dublin City Council (DCC) has still not been told by Government of its 2026 allocation for tenant-in-situ (TIS) home purchases, which are designed to keep tenants who are at risk of eviction in their homes.
Speaking at a council meeting earlier this week, DCC housing chief Mick Mulhern said he was still awaiting clarity on the future financial footing for the programme, which has prevented thousands of people from entering homelessness.
"We haven’t yet been told what our additional TIS funding will be for 2026,” he told the council chamber, but said existing funding was still being worked through.
Introduced in March 2023 as the eviction ban was lifted, TIS enables local authorities and the Housing Agency to buy rental properties where the owner wants to sell up. The tenant then pays rent to either the council or the Housing Agency.
Last year, DCC was allocated €95m for a combined TIS and vacant homes acquisition programme, however this funding was exhausted by June, stalling purchases for several months.
Many councils around the country faced similar issues, with hundreds of home acquisitions placed on hold as a result.
It was reopened in September when the Government brought forward a portion of the 2026 budget.
However, a major question mark hangs over the remainder of the funding, and indeed the future of the scheme, considering Government is increasingly calling it a “temporary” initiative.
Furthermore, a new set of restrictions for accessing TIS funding was introduced by Minister for Housing James Browne in April of last year.
One of the new requirements is that only properties in receipt of the Housing Assistance Payment or Rental Accommodation Scheme for at least two years are eligible for purchase.
Other changes deprioritise single people and couples without children from accessing the scheme.
Councils are also now no longer allowed to purchase properties which require any refurbishment works.
This last requirement is proving to be a particular headache for DCC, whose executive manager for housing, Frank d’Arcy, said it had become “a challenge progressing TIS acquisitions,” specifically citing the refurbishment rule.
"The DCC acquisition team are engaging with the Department to seek a resolution on the matter,” he said.
At this week’s meeting, Independent councillor Pat Dunne said the TIS scheme was “the one thing that should have been left alone” in our housing policy.
“Let’s bring it back to the way it was. I’ve listened carefully to the manager saying how they’re trying to find ways around how to bring people under that,” he said.
Sinn Féin councillor Janice Boylan said she’ll “never, ever” understand the Government’s faltering support for the programme.
“The minister should be providing much more funding to this because we’ve proven time and time again that this has saved many, many people from going into homelessness,” she said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Housing said that the parameters of this year’s second-hand acquisition programme, of which TIS is a part, would be notified to councils in the first quarter of the year.
The Government, they said, “remains committed to continue having second hand acquisitions as an option for our local authorities”.