Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The people of Galway are being told that there is no place to accommodate them, and that is a fact. The assistant CEO of COPE in Galway said that the homeless crisis in Galway is "unrelenting" and that, in his 20 years in his role, it is the worst he has ever seen. I have less than two minutes so I will not elaborate further. His comments can be read in today's newspapers.

There are people in Galway who have been on housing waiting lists in the city since 2002. The HAP scheme is the only game in town in Galway. The last time the local authority built a house was in 2009. The authority has recently acquired some houses, and earlier this year it completed 14 houses, but these were the first since 2009. In recent days another young man died on our streets in the curtilage of the city council offices. He is the second man to die on the streets of Galway in ten months, bringing the total to 25 people in the past 15 months.

Coincidentally, nine months ago almost to the day, the Tánaiste was in the chair when I raised this matter on Leader's Questions. He said then that while he and I often disagreed, he agreed with me about the crisis in Galway, the difficulties with developer-led development, and the lack of local authority housing. He also agreed with me about the acute need to declare an emergency, to put a master plan in place and to ascertain from the local authority where the difficulties lie. Here we are, almost nine months later and none of that has happened. I could repeat the same speech again but will not do so. Since I made that speech, two more people have died, bringing the total in Galway to 25.

I do not like to exaggerate. I like to stick to the facts. We have the most acute housing crisis in Galway. It is worse than Dublin. People have been waiting since 2002.

I will finish with an email I received today from a parent of three children, two of whom are severely disabled. They will be put out of their home in six months but there is no property available to them. It is impossible to get a HAP property in Galway, as the Simon Community has pointed out repeatedly.

See this speech in context