A monthly payment to those who accommodate Ukrainian people in their spare rooms or second homes will be wound down over the next year.
The Accommodation Recognition Payment (ARP), a tax-free monthly payment, will be further reduced from €600 to €400 per month as part of Government plans to wind down temporary protections for Ukrainian people.
Minister of State Colm Brophy also confirmed the Government wants to move towards the “reduction and eventual elimination” of hotel accommodation being contracted to accommodate Ukrainian people.
The ARP, which was introduced in 2022 in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has accommodated 42,000 people in 23,500 properties at a monthly cost of €14.5 million
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The scheme, which had been due to expire this month, will be extended once more to March 2027. But Brophy said “the time for the scheme” is “coming to a conclusion”.
“It is therefore my view that we will be extending the scheme, as indicated, for 12 months. This will be part of a phasing-out process of the scheme of the ARP. It will also be the intention to reduce the payment from €600 to €400 as part of that phasing-out of ARP, and that, I believe, will enable us to have a gradual winding-down scheme,” he told the Dáil on Thursday.
“Ukrainians, who have enjoyed temporary protection in Ireland, are a welcome part of our community. There are many, many opportunities for them to avail of housing within their own right. And many, many Ukrainians are doing that at this moment, and I believe in terms of the ARP scheme, we are going to work to a process of making it very clear that that scheme will be coming to an end.”
The scheme initially offered a tax-free payment of €400 a month to those who offered accommodation to Ukrainian refugees. The government was already facing pressures on its supply of accommodation for international protection applicants and needed the assistance of the public to help house Ukrainians who had fled to Ireland.
The rate of the tax-free payment was increased to €800 from December 2022. Last June, the Government announced a cut to the ARP from €800 to €600 a month. This was part of a general rowback on some temporary supports for Ukrainian people, and also part of a Government plan to try to mitigate any effect the ARP was having on the housing crisis.
The ARP had been identified by the Government as having a negative impact on the availability of private rented accommodation. While analysis within the Department of Housing had said reducing the rate of the payment from €800 to €600 a month had helped to reduce the incentive for landlords to leave the private rental sector, a recent policy paper said the ARP “still represents a substantial incentive to divert properties from the private rental sector to the ARP scheme”.
A regulatory risk analysis of the Government’s planned reforms of rental regulations said the “tax-free nature of the ARP means that it is more attractive than rental returns in some part of country, including the maximum levels of the housing assistance payment (Hap) available to some households nationally”.
Since March 1st, new rules have said any property that had been used as a rental accommodation up to the Russian invasion in 2022 could no longer qualify as an ARP. It was intended to limit the payment to those who were either offering spare rooms within their own homes, or second properties that had never been in the private rental market.
Brophy also confirmed the Government wanted to move towards the “elimination” of temporary accommodation for Ukrainian people in hotels, so that those beds can be returned to the tourism sector. He said the Government wanted to see “businesses going back to what they were doing originally, and having the ability to put beds and accommodation back into local communities and back into area, to the benefit of those local communities and areas”.
There are 531 contracts for Ukrainian accommodation, representing 22,450 beds. Brophy said this includes hotels, guest houses and B&Bs.
So far this year, 25 contracts to provide accommodation to Ukrainian people have been ended. This follows 195 contracts that were ended in 2025 and 420 in 2024.
Almost 19,200 Ukrainian people are in State-contracted accommodation in Ireland, a drop from a peak of 60,000 people in November 2023. New arrivals from Ukraine to Ireland are provided 30 days accommodation in designated State-funded centres.
