Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have serious concerns about the Bill, although I understand where it is coming from. I have serious concerns about what might be the unintended consequences leading to substandard accommodation. I also have concerns that the Bill is being put forward as a solution to the housing crisis, a crisis which has been driven by Government policy.

Successive Governments have utterly relied on the private market and have failed to build houses to the standard we require and in sufficient numbers.

Just a few days ago, COPE in Galway city launched its annual report. It confirmed in that report that it worked with 702 homeless adults in 2016, and that the children numbered 512, which number had increased substantially from between 400 and 500. If the Minister could listen to my point on the homeless children on the streets of Galway, who are there directly as a result of Government policy, I would appreciate it. The Hope Foundation resorts to fundraising and to statements at mass on Sundays asking us to contribute to it as a charity. The county manager in Galway has resorted to sleeping on the streets to feel and see what homelessness is like rather than doing something about the housing crisis. There is no way out of this crisis without a commitment to a public housing construction programme. We have adequate land zoned as residential in Galway and we need to build houses. We also need to know from the Minister, who has just left, what has happened to the national vacant housing reuse strategy. Has the relevant committee met? If so, what report has it come up with? We need to know the result of the buy-and-renew scheme and the uptake thereof. The same applies to the repair-and-leasing scheme. What is the position on the vacant site levy? There is no update on any of these schemes.

We are proceeding as if this were a jigsaw rather than a policy from a Government stating we are going to provide homes for our people because a house is not an asset or something to be traded but a home where people can have security so they can concentrate on what matters. What we are left with is this Vacant Housing Refurbishment Bill. I will give guarded support to it, and I look forward to its being teased out on Committee Stage but I have the most serious concerns about unintended consequences. I see special units being set up as one-stop facilities and no mention of an appeals system, of how local authorities have been deprived of essential staff or of how councils are not in a position to deal with the volume coming before them. I would have thought we would have had basic statistics on these matters so we could formulate policy.

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