The Department of Justice is opposing the publication of a list of international protection accommodation service (IPAS) contracts that broke procurement rules.
It claims that sharing contract values would weaken its hand when negotiating with new accommodation providers.
The Public Accounts Committee, the Dáil’s spending watchdog, had been asking for the “rationale” for not publishing the list of contracts.
The Department of Children – which had previously been responsible for international protection – had been asked to provide PAC with a list of non-compliant IPAS contracts.
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In 2024, the department gave PAC a list of 47 contracts from 2022 that were not compliant with procurement rules, along with a request not to publish the list.
The department cited reasons of confidentiality and commercial sensitivity.
When TDs queried this decision, they were told in June that the Department of Justice was now responsible for IPAS and had been since May 2025.
Last month Oonagh McPhillips, the secretary general at the Department of Justice, wrote to PAC to again state that the department was opposed to PAC publishing the list.
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Ms McPhillips told politicians that securing accommodation for international protection applicants “remains challenging”, and that the State must still accommodate “approximately 31,000 applicants for international protection”.
She said the “great majority” of those people were being accommodated in about 300 private commercial providers across the country.
“Procuring sufficient accommodation, and at the best value which can be obtained, is an ongoing challenge, requiring that the department takes all appropriate steps to strengthen its negotiating position,” she said.
“Our assessment is that disclosing the contract values could prejudice the State’s position and weaken our hand in commercial negotiations both ongoing and into the future.”
She said that “on balance” non-publication “protects the State’s procurement effectiveness, and in high likelihood reduces costs”.
“The potential impact of weakening the State’s negotiation position on 300 contracts with an annual value of €875 million is not insignificant,” she said.
The Department of Justice said it “has nothing further to add to the information contained in the correspondence, which has been published by the committee”.
It comes as Sinn Féin TD Matt Carthy said figures provided to him showed “there has been a significant increase in the number of IPAS contracts terminated for noncompliance.”
The Department of Justice told Mr Carthy, in response to a parliamentary question, that 12 contracts were terminated in the first half of 2025 compared with four in all of 2024.
“This is significant and suggests that there weren’t sufficient checks before contracts were granted to those seeking to profit from the Government’s failures in relation to the international protection system,” he said.
He said the public was “reliant on media exposure of revelations in relation to companies involved in the provision of this accommodation”.
“It is now time for full transparency in terms of the provision of IPAS and Ukrainian accommodation, the extortionate prices being paid, the fact that a small number of people have become millionaires and how in some cases people and companies with no track record have secured lucrative contracts,” he said.
“That has to happen as a matter of urgency.”
