Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin and Raise the Roof for this comprehensive motion. It sets out the facts and then states that we need a radical shift in housing policy. That is exactly what we need because it is the policy of this Government and previous governments that has led to the emergency in which we find ourselves, which the Government has not declared an emergency. In the motion there are 14 points, and at the end it refers to the holding of a referendum to enshrine a right to housing in the Constitution. That is the most basic step we should take. I have said repeatedly that without security of tenure and without a home, people - residents and citizens - cannot participate actively in democracy. More than ever, we need security of tenure and homes.

The Minister has left. I know he is busy. He put up a spirited defence but what he tried to defend is indefensible. We are now on our fourth Minister since I was first elected here in February 2016. We have had Deputy Alan Kelly, followed by Deputy Simon Coveney and Eoghan Murphy, and now Deputy Darragh O'Brien. What has not changed at all, other than the documents and the glossy covers, is the policy. We keep going with the policy that the market will provide and, when it does not, we will use taxpayers to make it provide at enormous cost, with absence of security of tenure and a dire emergency.

I am so tired listening to my own voice on this that I will quote from documents. When the Minister was here he accused the Opposition of being against homeownership and said that his policy is to encourage homeownership with various schemes, which have been found utterly defective. My time is limited but I will quote from an ESRI report published in July 2022. It is an interesting document. It notes that there has been "a notable decline in homeownership and a rise in the proportion of households in private rental accommodation". It goes on to state that "Ireland has experienced a marked drop in homeownership rates" and goes on to give the specific figures, which are substantial. That fully contradicts the Minister's statement that his policies have led to homeownership. That is clearly not the case. In the report there is a very interesting statistic. The authors talk about poverty later in life among people who do not own their own homes and the increase in such poverty, particularly among women. The report points out research that was carried out across ten member states, including Ireland, which found that neither generous pensions nor high ownership rates had the strongest poverty-reducing potential.

What had? Lower poverty rates in older age were most strongly associated with the provision of social housing for older people. That is an interesting fact in the middle of the research.

Let me look again at the Simon Community report because I have a little more time than I had earlier. Directly consequent to the Government’s policies, Galway city has absolutely no properties available. There are very few for rent and absolutely none in the county or city within the HAP criteria. Even if you allow for the increase in the discretion, there is nothing available. The study was carried out in June over three days. It is called a snapshot. It is the Simon Community’s 37th report. Worse the situation has got. The Simon Community, which has no axe to grind, is setting out the facts and figures for Galway city and county and the rest of the country. Those are the facts, so any sensible, intelligent Government — maybe these do not go together; I do not know — would say the policies are not working and will have to be reconsidered. That is not happening.

A point was made on NAMA. NAMA has been a huge part of the problem considering the remit it was given. It was praised for carrying out that remit, which has artificially, along with HAP and all the payments enshrined in law by the Labour Party and Fine Gael in 2014, but particularly the HAP, ensured the prices of houses and rent would remain astronomically high and simply unaffordable to everyone. The latest is that the young teachers trying to get jobs in Dublin cannot stay in Dublin because there is no accommodation, yet we persist with making silly personal comments across the floor as if we were standing here just for nothing. All the time, we are doing what we do on behalf of our constituents on the ground, yet we cannot even get a meeting with the local authority; we have to do it by email.

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