Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 19 June 2025
Public Accounts Committee
2023 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 34 - Housing, Local Government and Heritage
Report on the Accounts of the Public Services 2023
Chapter 2 - Central Government Funding of Local Authorities
Chapter 11 - Exceptional State Funding of the Peter McVerry Trust
Chapter 12 - Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund
Local Government Fund - Account 2023
2:00 am
Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
I appreciate that. I was going to come back to that. I appreciate efforts are being made but the crisis was created by not building social housing back in 2009. I do not know where the mechanism was for the Department or the local authorities to come back and say not to do that as it would be an absolute disaster. Not alone did we stop building housing, the idiotic HAP scheme was brought in and we now cannot get rid of it overnight. It stated a person was adequately housed if he or she got a house in the private sector paid for with taxpayers' money and with rent tied to it. This is no reflection on the tenant. It is a reflection on the housing assistance payment policy that was brought in and was absolutely guaranteed to make the crisis worse.
How many planning vacancies are there at the moment throughout the country? Am I wrong to state it is 500 at any given time? Am I wrong?
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