Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Tá sé thar a bheith deacair bheith foighneach le leibhéal na díospóireachta seo ón Rialtas agus ó Fhianna Fáil agus iad ag caint as dhá thaobh a bhéal. Tá sé thar a bheith deacair. Tá géarchéim tithíochta i gceist agus tá sé thar am aithint a thabhairt don ghéarchéim sin agus céimeanna faoi leith a thógáil chun dul i ngleic leis an ngéarchéim.

It is difficult to remain patient with the reply from Government and the approach by Fianna Fáil to this matter. I have no hesitation in supporting the principle of this Bill and I fully understand where the Deputy is coming from on it, as with all the other initiatives we have brought in over the past two and a half years. In a sense I am glad the Minister has left the Dáil, although I realise he is busy, because my patience has worn thin listening to him talking about not trampling on people's rights. The Minister of State, who is in the Chamber, might acknowledge that we are trampling on people's rights. There are 10,000 or more people homeless, including almost 4,000 children. I would call that trampling on their rights. The high number of people on the waiting list is increasing by the day.

The Minister talks about unintended consequences. At what stage does a sensible and rational government realise that 10,000 people homeless is not acceptable collateral damage from its market-driven policies? At what stage does it realise that if it keeps on and acknowledges that it is pouring money into the private market, it is part of the problem not the solution? Twenty-seven people have died on our streets as a result of homelessness. There are long waiting lists. In Galway the list goes back to 2002. They are the people being housed there.

The Minister talks about ideology and the far left. I have repeatedly said I am a very practical, pragmatic female politician and there is a solution to this problem. It is not the ideological left that has ideology, it is the Government, driven by the ideology that the market will provide, in flagrant disregard for the evidence that the market is not providing but is part of the problem. Fr. McVerry, repeatedly and without any agenda, has drawn to the Government's attention the extent of the housing crisis. I read in a letter written in September by 51 academics. We often accuse them of living in ivory towers but they came out of their ivory towers, including six professors, 42 doctors, an architect and a research officer with SIPTU and so on, not the hard ideological left, to tell us there is a major housing crisis and we cannot pursue the market-driven agenda.

The Government needs to step in i lár an aonaigh to be right in the middle of providing houses, to enshrine a right to a home in our Constitution. What this Government and previous ones, including, I am afraid, the Labour Party, have done is privatise and marketise houses and not look on them as homes. The first step in doing that was taken by the Labour Party and Fine Gael in respect of HAP. They said it was the only game in town and, unfortunately, it is, but there are no homes in Galway available under HAP.

The Department is setting weekly and annual targets for the local authority to move people from rent supplement to the HAP. There are no HAP houses. On my desk I have a letter from somebody whose supplement has been stopped and who cannot get a HAP landlord. The individual is in a house but the landlord does not want to enter the HAP scheme. The individual is in receipt of no payment. This is what the Government's policies are doing. The Government is not declaring an emergency, as was mentioned already. An emergency was declared in respect of the FEMPI legislation and the guarantee for the banks. Incidentally, the banks we bailed out are not loaning developers any money now. The Government had to set up another quango and another level of bureaucracy lately in order to loan money.

This legislation may have practical difficulties but they can all be sorted out with the appropriate amendments. What it is doing is asking the Government to recognise an emergency so appropriate steps can be taken to restore the balance. We clearly need landlords but the biggest landlord should be the State. We praise and follow the European Union in many areas and want to be the best boy and girl in the class but we will not follow the European Union on social housing. We will not look to Austria or to other good examples of a very high rate of public housing. We need to send out a message to the market that the Government will provide homes for our people. Pending the construction of those houses, which should be done on a multi-pronged level, involving small builders, co-operative housing bodies and all sorts of steps the Government is not taking, there has to be a freeze on rents. The proposals in this Bill can be suitably amended.

Galway city has the biggest housing crisis in the country. It has the biggest homelessness problem. We have land but need more. The land we have in public ownership, at Ceannt Station, the docks and elsewhere, is not subject to a master plan. I have pointed out repeatedly that the approach is developer-led all over again. The city should have no housing crisis, yet its problem is the worst in the country.

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