Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Solidarity and People Before Profit. I have no hesitation in supporting this draft legislation. I have two and a half minutes speaking time. It is significant that the two major parties who are colluding in not supporting this legislation are at pains to reduce our speaking time. We have seven and a half minutes between us, which I hope we will use effectively.

Eighty-one countries have enshrined the protection of housing or a home in their constitutions. It is nothing unusual. Included in that number are Belgium, Finland, Greece, The Netherlands and Portugal. Other countries that have protected it in legislation include Austria, France, Germany and Luxembourg. Significantly, none of these countries has a housing crisis. The Minister might look at that.

I thank him for his statement that he is going to leave ideology at the door because if that is true, we are certainly turning a new page in this book of crisis after crisis. If he is leaving behind the ideology that has created this crisis continuously over the life of successive governments, I welcome it. The Simon Community gives us a snapshot of the result of this crisis. In August of this year, over three days it examined 11 areas in the country only to find that 91% of rental properties were unavailable to those in receipt of rent supplement or the housing assistance payment, HAP, which is the only show in town certainly in Galway city. In addition, it found that 8,000 people were in accommodation and that number was rising. In Galway city, approximately 15,000 people have been waiting for a house since 2001. The crisis has been deliberately created. In Galway city, rent is 213% more than rent supplement or HAP. Crisis after crisis has come from an ideology that said the market will provide, but it has signally failed to provide. If the Minister is telling me tonight that he is leaving ideology at the door, I welcome it. If he is telling me that he has suddenly realised a fundamental solution to this problem is the direct construction of social housing, I will be the first to praise him and champion that.

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