Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is extremely helpful so my comments are about a housing crisis. The housing crisis has not been caused by difficult tenants, people refusing houses or indeed people objecting to planning permissions although we will always have a small minority. They certainly did not create the housing crisis however: it is a deliberate crisis caused as a result of the policies of successive Governments and we know that. The Government is picking up the pieces and I appreciate that but it is also part of the problem. The Minister of State and the Government believe that the market will provide and the market has not provided.

In 2009, in Galway city we stopped building houses. We just stopped. We bailed out the banks and we looked after everybody but we did not look after the ordinary people on the ground. That was bad enough except we created the problem and no social houses have been built in Galway and the Minister of State knows that. I have all the reports before me and there has been some progress. Some 14 houses were built in Galway between 2009 and 2018. To put the beautiful city of Galway that I come from in perspective, it is second worst in terms of rent in the country. We have most of the debate in the media on Dublin. The report from the council is that Galway is the second worst and daft.iehas confirmed that it has risen by 13%.

A major contributory factor in landlords existing the RAS scheme alone is that tenants cannot pay close to the current market rents and this is a rent pressure zone. The landlords who are there are exiting the market. We have over 4,000 households on the waiting list in Galway. Some of them have been on that waiting list since 2002. I know that for a fact because they are in and out of my office on a regular basis. I am unsure of the number of people but we have 50 families in emergency accommodation. That emergency accommodation cost €2.5 million last year. To be precise, it was €2.455197 million. That is not to mention any of the shelters or any of the other measures. The families in emergency accommodation, as has been said, do not cover the women who have fled homes as a result of domestic violence, nor does it cover the hundreds of people who are in direct provision and who cannot get out even though they have achieved status because there is no accommodation available.

The Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, talked about social mix and I appreciate that he has other things on today and I make no point on that except what I heard him say this morning. I thought I was beyond despair, but when the Minister talks about the HAP payment being helpful in having a social mix I really want to give up. Some €431 million was spent on HAP this year. It went from €150 million in 2017, it doubled in 2018 and it is going up to €431 million and possibly €500 million this year in HAP payments. Each year it is increasing and doubling to back up the private market artificially and then we wonder why rents are rising and rising. Galway city has 26 ha of land zoned residential alone. In addition and not counted in that, we have Ceannt Station with something like 14 acres of land. We have the docklands with acres of land. We have 150 acres between Galway City Council and Galway County Council in the former airport. That is not to mention institutional land.

I thank my colleague for tabling this motion and for the work that has gone into it in declaring a crisis. What the motion will do is make us act in a different manner because a house is not a product. It is the right of a person to have a home and declaring an emergency is sending out a strong message.

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