The Public Accounts Committee has released its report on the state’s spend on asylum seekers and Ukrainians in 2024, and even to the seasoned observer of the profligate asylum spend, some of what is revealed is mind-boggling.
The sheer scale of the spend, at a time when the State was denying Irish people with cancer medical cards, and refusing sums as small as €60,000 to help volunteers get elderly people to essential healthcare appointments, is actually staggering, as is the careless attitude towards overpayments, financial controls and oversight.
There is much in the report of interest, though as Matt Treacy has written repeatedly here, a full inquiry into the absolute cash-cow that asylum provision became is absolutely necessary, but this review confirms the eye-watering sums involved.
Total gross expenditure in 2024 alone amounted to almost €3 billion: a Vote 24 spend of almost €661 million and a Vote 40 Programme E spend of €2.3 billion for the year. It almost beggars belied that such huge amounts of taxpayer funds was spent given the issues with accountability.
But, as the office of Comptroller and Auditor General had previously noted, the IPAS programme had serious deficiencies, and this PAC report also acknowledges serious shortcomings – and that there were “significant weaknesses in procurement and contract documentation during the period.”
And PAC says that the they remain “concerned that legacy contracts established during the emergency period may not yet fully meet the same governance standards applied to new contracts.”
Hundreds of millions of euro were spent on non-compliant procurement in the period – a sum that would have led to a media furore if it was happening in any other sector.
And they whole area of the taxpayer paying for asylum capacity that was not actually being used was also highlighted as PAC asked that the Department report back in 9 months “outlining its retrospective reconciliation of historical overpayments arising from discrepancies between contracted capacity and actual occupancy in IPAS centres, including recoupment plans for all confirmed overpayments”.
The case of River Lodge in Newtownmountkennedy – the Wicklow village where, Gript readers might remember, Gardaí battered and pepper-sprayed protesters – was written up in the PAC report and is just one example of the sheer waste of money in addition to the reckless and vicious bullying by the State of the people of a small town.
PAC says the “Department stated that the site was established as an emergency location for tented accommodation and that it was used from May to December 2024, when severe weather conditions made it necessary to move residents to alternative accommodation.”
“By July 2026, a total of €4.6 million had been spent on River Lodge. Site establishment and maintenance cost €562,017, so the main drivers were the €1.93 million cost of providing accommodation and services, primarily incurred in 2024, and the €2 million cost of security, most of which (€1.3 million) was incurred in 2025 after use of the site had ceased. The Department confirmed that alternative development options were deemed unworkable and that following minor works the site will be returned to the HSE.”
€1.3m million for security on an empty site. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so deadly serious.
There is more to unpack in the PAC report, including the need to report on age assessments of bogus claims for asylum for minors and the role of NGOs in the gravy train, and I shall return to this tomorrow.
Carol Nolan TD, who has been a persistent voice for clarity in regard to this absurd spending, has said the report provides clear official vindication of the concerns she has raised repeatedly in the Dáil, through parliamentary questions and in public statements over the course of the last number of years.
“The report, published today, documents serious deficiencies in financial control and contract management during the rapid expansion of IPAS accommodation from roughly 7,000 to 33,000 beds,” she said.
“It confirms heavy reliance on higher-cost commercial providers, significant overpayments from capacity-versus-occupancy discrepancies, a major VAT overcharge case, and the full repayment of a €13.5 million EU emergency grant following European Court of Auditors findings on procurement,” the Offaly TD added.
“The PAC report confirms, in black and white, the systemic failures I have been highlighting for years. These findings also align with my parliamentary questions from February, which established that non-compliant procurement totalled €137.6 million in 2023–2024 alone (€84.8 million in 2023 and €52.8 million in 2024),” said Deputy Nolan.
“What we have seen with IPAS contracts is a pattern of inadequate safeguards, incomplete due diligence, missing signed contracts, reckless planning and insurance gaps, and poor value for money that has cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions. The official figures speak for themselves.”
The report also examines age-assessment processes, an issue Deputy Nolan has previously described as “not merely deficient but dangerously unreliable.”
Tusla data cited by the Committee show that of 656 referrals in 2024, 282 were flagged for age-eligibility concerns and 88 were returned as ineligible; in 2025, 141 of 768 referrals were deemed ineligible. The average time spent with Tusla by an inaccurately referred individual was 57.6 days. Tusla estimated costs of €124.5 million for approximately 1,200 unaccompanied minors in 2025.
The Committee recommends that the Department ensure its statutory responsibility for age assessment is applied in practice so adult costs are not displaced onto Tusla, and that a joint review be conducted on the scale and cost of cases in which adults were accommodated as minors.
She called for an end to profiteering in the sector, a call that most voters in my opinion would be happy to get behind.
.