Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to share time with Deputies Joan Collins and Michael Fitzmaurice.

I wonder what to say in the three minutes I have. I do not address my comments to the Minister of State or Fianna Fáil or the Labour Party because I have lost all faith. My role and the role of the Opposition is to give confidence to the people outside the House that there are people in here who do not believe the propaganda that the Government is rebuilding Ireland. It is reshaping Ireland in order that the vast majority of our people will never afford a house, will live in accommodation with no security of tenure and will not be able participate in its so-called "republic of opportunity".

I sat here and listened to members of the Labour Party, who have left. I point that out because I do not like to speak behind anyone's back.

To speak about the Kenny report published in the 1970s, when the Labour Party was in power, is bad enough. The Labour Party was also in the previous Government which had an overwhelming majority but it absolutely failed to use it to deal with the housing crisis. Instead it presided over legislation that fundamentally changed the issue in terms of housing. The Labour Party said that the housing assistance payment in the legislation it introduced in 2014 was the equivalent of social housing. Therefore, if in receipt of a housing assistance payment, a person was considered adequately housed. Naturally, there was outrage about this. People were removed from the housing waiting list and I was accused of being a liar when I said it. At the time I was a lawyer and they might be very close, but it was confirmed by the director of services. The legislation introduced by Fine Gael and the Labour Party said that the only game in town was the housing assistance payment, and a person was removed from the waiting list once he or she got it. I understand the position now is that the person is put on a transfer list. Therefore, to get to the truth of how many households are on a waiting list, one has to consider the waiting list, the transfer list and those who have are in long-term leasing.

The Government persists with its spin that it is building social housing. The local authority in Galway has given up giving us figures. In April of this year, its quarterly report does not give us figures. The figure for September of last year was 4,720 households. That is somewhere between 13,000 and 15,000 people on a waiting list since 2002, with not a hope of a house. Last Saturday week, I sat in an apartment that is about to be sold, and it is one of two groups of apartments. The tenants have already been evicted so that the landlord can do Airbnb. Those tenants fought and did their best but, in the end, had to look after themselves and try to find alternatives.

I will stop for my colleague. I beg her pardon.

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