Government Bill Could Leave Vulnerable Adults and Families Without Shelter While Beds Remain Empty, Warns Focus Ireland

New Government legislation, the Housing and Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026, to be rushed through the Dáil on Wednesday night after minimal debate and last-minute amendments, represents a fundamental shift in homeless policy and means that a vulnerable person might be denied shelter for the night while a bed lies empty.

“Focus Ireland has been raising concerns about the Bill and what would be included in the Government’s last-minute amendments,” said Mike Allen, Director of Advocacy at Focus Ireland, “but what has now been published confirms our worst fears – and the fact that the Minister is refusing to listen to experts on the front-line.”

He explains: “We are familiar with legislation which includes one or two measures which we don’t think will work, but this ‘Miscellaneous Bill’ includes so many ill-considered measures, it is impossible to detail them all in one press statement. So, the area we want to draw public attention to is the treatment of vulnerable people who are seeking shelter, which will inevitably increase the risk of vulnerable people being forced to sleep rough.

“The Government’s entire justification for this rushed legislation is that it would provide ‘clarity’ to the homelessness system. Instead, it creates a range of new uncertainties about access to emergency accommodation and how vulnerable people will be treated.”

The legislation means that only people who can prove to local authority staff that they are ‘habitually resident’ in Ireland will get access to shelter if they are homeless. This sounds harmless but, in reality, proving that you meet the habitual residence condition often requires you to present detailed paperwork which you are unlikely to have on you if you are fleeing domestic violence, have just been evicted or are going through a mental health crisis.

Under the old legislation, local authorities had the discretion on humanitarian grounds to offer on-going shelter to people. The Government amendments remove the legal basis for this humanitarian safety net and replaces it with a new so-called ‘safety net’ of night-time only shelter for two nights.

This Bill is the first change in homelessness legislation since 1988, but instead of using the opportunity to bring the homeless system up to date, the Government is slipping through a range of measures which bring it back to the Victorian past. The legislation goes as far as to set down in law the time at which vulnerable people are allowed access to shelter (8pm) and when they will be thrown out (8am), making no provision for winter darkness or people who have children with them.

Mr Allen adds: “What the Government is calling a ‘safety net’ is really a return to the sort of cruel approach favoured in the Workhouse and the County Home, where people are only provided shelter for a few hours and given no security for the following night. Any Government in the last 40 years would have been ashamed to introduce legislation which is so poorly drafted, unclear and punitive.

The Minister appears to have been fooled into thinking that the best way to solve homelessness is by making life even more miserable for homeless people. This legislation will not reduce homelessness, nor help a single homeless person, nor provide a single new home.”

“There is still time for the Government to put this legislation on hold while it is given the detailed consideration it merits, or for the Seanad to play its constitutional role. If the legislation is passed unaltered, it will result in on-going tensions between homeless NGOs and local government about how its provision are implemented and monitored.”

Focus Ireland gave a limited welcome to a new provision on the ‘Best interests of the child’ (BIC) which the organisation has campaigned for over several years. “It is deeply disappointing that this provision is deliberately narrow so that local authorities only need to consider the BIC when they have decided to offer accommodation etc, but do not have to consider children in the decision whether they offer shelter, or in any other aspect of the interaction with families. In our view this provision does not reflect what was agreed by the Irish people when they endorsed the ‘rights of the child’ clause in the Irish constitution.