Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to say at the outset that objections have not caused the housing crisis, so let us get that out of the way. Objections have not caused the housing crisis. While the running down of the planning authorities and the failure to recruit staff for them and provide resources have been significant, I am tired of that narrative.

I support the motion and the amendment tabled by People Before Profit. I have spoken on this subject every time I have got the opportunity since 2016. I thank Sinn Féin for tabling the motion. I speak on this subject not from any wish to embarrass or criticise a Government but simply because what has been allowed to happen with housing is an obscenity. Our housing crisis has become embedded with the consequences set out in the motion with significant implications for services, education, healthcare and social care. We fought a battle to get gardaí assigned to the Gaeltacht but there is no place to live. It is an obscenity.

Any wise Government would ask "what is wrong here?". What has happened is that it has become embedded and it is like collateral damage in war. The policy continues to rely on the market at every stage with every assistance given and the collateral damage is that we are now standing here in the Dáil with 12,827 people accessing homelessness services, that is, 8,923 adults and 3,904 children. These figures do not include people who are sleeping rough, the hidden homeless or women who have sought refuge because of domestic violence. Tell me that the Government's policy is working given these consequences, not to mention the cost of homelessness services and the use of staff and so on. Still no Government will stand here and tell us "we got it wrong. Our policy is wrong".

From 18 to 24 September, we were told that there were 256 homeless adults in Galway city and county. The Simon Community produces a quarterly report called "Locked Out of the Market".

The significance of the review is in its title. It has been doing these for years. It takes a snapshot of three consecutive days. Nationally, there were only 27 properties available at the discretionary or standard rate. In Galway city centre, there was only one property. The main game in town is the housing assistance payment but only one property was available in Galway within HAP limits. Within the city suburbs, there were none. Average rents in Galway rose 10.7% in the 12 months to the second quarter of this year. This was the seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit increases. In Galway city, the average rent rose by 12.2% and in Galway county, it rose by 21.4%.

Will the Minister of State just listen to that? What do we do with facts like that? If we had a little wisdom, we might say there is something seriously wrong here, something which began when HAP was placed on a statutory footing back in 2013 or 2014 after having been rolled out as a pilot project, when we councillors in Galway city were told it was the only game in town. That was the terminology used. I am simply looking around to see if my colleague is coming. We were told HAP was the only game in town.

Between HAP, long-term leasing and the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, we are putting over €1 billion a year into the pockets of landlords. Once again, I will say that I am not here to condemn landlords. We need landlords but they need to be balanced by a Government policy in which Government plays a central role in the provision of public housing on public land. However, we have singularly failed to provide public housing on public land.

Some Deputies are making ridiculous comments suggesting that it is objectors who are causing the problem. There is also a Government narrative that we on this side are against everything. I will come to the help-to-buy scheme, which the Government continuously includes in its narrative as something wonderful. Let me tell the Minister of State about that scheme. It was introduced in 2016 and became operational in January 2017. It has been renewed repeatedly. It was meant to be a temporary measure in 2017 but is still with us in 2023. There were enhanced rules to allow people to get a greater amount of money and so on.

According to a review by Mazars, "The scheme is poorly targeted with respect to incomes, location, house prices and other socioeconomic factors" while "the problems that it sought to address remain and the specific market failure at which it was targeted are not likely to be addressed by proposed new initiatives". It also stated: "The sort of policy uncertainty that has arisen with ongoing annual extensions without a clear picture of the longer-term policy environment is undesirable." I have kept the very best until last. The review states: "A rational approach would not design the scheme as it currently exists". Of course, it goes on to say that the scheme should be abolished but not now; let us sin and worry about it later, although the scheme should be scrapped.

There have been various other reports and reviews. On 13 October of this year, in referring to the extension of the help-to-buy scheme in the budget, the ESRI said: "Given the robust demand for housing combined with long-standing supply constraints, it is likely that these demand-side policies will increase demand for housing, putting pressure on house prices." In February 2021, an ESRI representative also stated that "a review of the ... scheme ... suggests that many households with large deposits have received support under the scheme." I never hear the Taoiseach or the Tánaiste referring to any of these facts when they talk about the help-to-buy scheme. A Parliamentary Budget Office overview of the help-to-buy scheme stated: "A third of recipients did not need ... [help-to-buy] to meet the 10% deposit requirement".

There is also a narrative suggesting that judicial reviews are holding up everything. That narrative preceded the introduction of the new planning Bill. What do we know about that? The Office of the Planning Regulator has highlighted that judicial reviews are a small problem in the planning system and has given specific figures as to cases in which judicial reviews were not a problem. It goes on and on.

The Government has created a monster in this market that has utterly failed to provide. I could count out ten or 11 schemes the Government has brought in to bolster the market. We have a jigsaw but no overall picture of how we are going to stop the homelessness we have or how we will provide homes for our people.

On top of that, there is any amount of public land in Galway city. I will repeat for the record that the docks have acres of land. Ceannt Station, right in the centre of town, also has acres of land. There are also acres of public land, although not enough, on Sandy Road and Headford Road. What have we done? We have proceeded without any overall plan for the common good. We are allowing a company that is ostensibly holding lands at the docks for the people of Galway to develop premium housing, rather than public housing, without any overall plan to fit into. At Ceannt Station, public land that should be used for the public good is being developed but not for the public good. In a similar way, the Land Development Agency has been involved at Sandy Road for I do not know how long now but there is still no progress.

In the middle of all these words I use continuously, what I am asking for is a recognition that we cannot proceed with this reliance on the market. We have to set a date for HAP payments to finish. They have to go. They have to be scrapped. It is quite clear that they cannot be scrapped overnight but our policy must be one of providing public housing on public land. All of the other things have to be phased out if we are seriously interested in bringing down the price of houses. The help-to-buy scheme is artificially keeping them way up.

I will finish on the failure to deal with regional development in an equal way. Earlier on, Deputy Canney mentioned that there are towns that do not have sewage systems. In Carraroe, i gcroílár na Gaeltachta is mó sa tír, níl aon chóras séarachais. Tá an t-uisce lofa ag dul díreach isteach san fharraige. Táimid ag fanacht le córas séarachais sa Cheathrú Rua, i gcroílár na Gaeltachta. Carraroe is a very good example. It has no hotel, although the university is based there, and it has raw sewage going straight into the sea. I will not be thanked for saying that publicly but that is the way it has been for years. A site was picked that was totally unsuitable and, 20 years down the road, this has not been dealt with. During all my time as a city councillor, I was hearing about plans for sewage treatment. No balanced regional development can take place within the county or on the east side of the city, where the city council still has not progressed a sewage treatment system.

I do not blame officials for this. I believe people within the Department are working very hard. I lay the blame on successive Governments, including this one that had the chance to do things differently because it has the money. All we wanted was a different vision. We all would have worked with the Government.

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