Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste is a former Minister with responsibility for housing. The situation in Galway is at crisis levels. The reality is that the population of Galway is growing naturally by approximately 1,000 a year. If that is divided in terms of housing requirement, we estimate we need approximately 350 houses to be built per annum. Currently, the latent demand for housing, in other words the backlog, is somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 units. Between private and public construction fewer than 300 houses will be built in Galway this year.

I hold a constituency clinic in Galway every Monday afternoon and throughout each week I am contacted by people who need emergency accommodation. Not even emergency accommodation is available in Galway currently. There is a three-week waiting period for emergency accommodation which, by its own definition, is an emergency. People are being told to self-fund, to sleep on a sofa or to live in their cars.

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