Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin, and, indeed, Fianna Fáil previously, for placing a spotlight on this area. I have no hesitation in supporting this Bill and the limited protections being sought for student accommodation under the tenancy board.

However, like the previous speaker, I would say that the crisis in student accommodation is simply a symptom of what is being allowed to happen. I live in a city, Galway, where there are two third level institutions, as well as the Galway Technical Institute. We have approximately 25,000 students. If anything illustrates the emptiness, if I might put it like that and I could use a much stronger word, of repeated Government policy, it is the fact that right beside the GMIT on the Dublin Road, there is a hotel that has been empty for over ten years. The hotel should have been used for student accommodation. It should have never been sold by the State in the first place. When it was sold, it was held in private ownership for a period and then left empty. It still remains empty on the Dublin Road, if the Minister wishes to go to see it. It highlights what has happened in Ireland with our reliance on the market. That hotel should have been taken back into State ownership and used for student accommodation, which would have helped relieve the difficulties in Galway.

Galway is a city that I have used repeatedly as an example because the crisis there is far worse than that in Dublin, in my opinion, based on the facts. We have people waiting on a waiting list from 2002 who never once received an offer of accommodation.

That illustrates it. We have somewhere between 13,000 and 15,000 people, depending on which statistics we use, on a waiting list. The Simon report, “Locked Out of the Market”, a snapshot study in March of this year is really worth looking at. They go through various towns and cities and they confirm the limited number of properties available. Bear in mind that the Government’s strategy is utterly reliant on the private market and we have twisted language to talk about social housing, which is really private accommodation with a housing assistance payment. That is what we are reliant on and then we look at Galway and there was an average of 15 properties available to rent in Galway city centre over the three days of the study. Much worse than that, not a single property was available within the four categories allowed under the housing assistance payment. There was no property available under the single category, for a couple, for a couple with one child or for a couple with more children. We are utterly reliant on the housing assistance payment and there are no properties available. To make it even worse, the discretion allowed for an increase of 20% still does not allow anyone in Galway to access property under the housing assistance payment.

We have to put this in context. In addition, in Galway the figures for homelessness on 27 April, and I failed to get the more up to date figures, showed 21 families with children in hotels and bed and breakfasts. We only have a population of something over 70,000. There were two couples in bed and breakfasts, three single people in bed and breakfasts, two families in transition and a further large family was staying somewhere else. Interestingly, this was in addition to the Fairgreen hostel and the Osterley hostel which looks after women. Then we have the new language. Throughout the winter, approximately ten county clients used the cold weather response bed. We have another system called the harm reduction packs; that is a sleeping bag plus food. That is what we are reduced to in Galway, giving out a harm reduction pack.

I am not here to give out. I am just over two years in the Dáil and I have used that time to highlight issues and offer solutions. We have any amount of land zoned residentially in Galway city bought at huge prices. I am asking the Minister why we are not building houses. I checked before I came in here and we plan to build 74. We have not built one single house since 2009. Some of the zoned land went back under the land aggregation scheme, some of it is in Galway and we are paying millions in interest alone, not to mention the loans, and the land is just sitting there. We are not building on it so one has to ask the question “what is going on here?”.

A number of things are going on. First, there is absolutely no sense of urgency from what I can see between the city council and the Government on monthly reports and updates. Second, a scandalous amount of that land, and I understand it is more than two thirds, has been set aside for a road that is most unlikely to go ahead but with the best will in the world will go ahead in 2024. Residential land bought at a huge price is left sitting there for a road in the future that will certainly not help us to comply with our obligations under climate change.

I live in the Claddagh. I have spent the last two years trying to find out why one house remains empty. Prior to it becoming vacant, it housed a family. There was nothing wrong with the house but it has remained empty. I do not wish to be parochial in any way but this illustrates the lack of urgency. It is a lovely house in a residential area remaining empty for up to two years. The latest explanation for that is that it now suddenly requires major works, which they did not seem to realise earlier. That is one example out of approximately 70 properties that we know.

I am listening to the Government talking about the provision of social housing when really it is talking about a housing assistance payment. Here we have the students coming forward. I really welcome the draft legislation but it is just a symptom. How many more symptoms do we have to raise in this Dáil before the Government realises that reliance on the market is simply making the problem worse? If we keep paying for and propping up the market it will make matters much worse. There has not been a single direct construction of student specific accommodation by either of the colleges in Galway. That is an absolute disgrace. They are now looking at building accommodation – after the horse has bolted. We are now also in a situation where we have jumped from 2011 where we had 19% of our population in rented accommodation, that was approximately 305,377 households, which has now gone up to almost half a million households reliant on the private market and still the penny has not dropped. I appreciate that the Government inherited difficulties but I see no urgency and I use Galway city and County Galway as an example.

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