Dáil debates

Wednesday, 10 April 2019

Building the Housing of the Future: Motion [Private Members]

 

3:20 pm

Photo of Catherine ConnollyCatherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Housing applicants were left with no choice. In a time of post-truth it is important that politicians stand up and be honest. Housing applicants are being removed from housing waiting lists and have no choice but to take the housing assistance payment.

Security of tenure and the concept of a home for life were gone with the stroke of a pen. In the midst of previous economic crises, construction of public housing never ceased. It ceased from 2009. That was under the previous Government, to be fair, but it was Fine Gael that enshrined the policy and it continues.

Galway city has a waiting list going back to 2002. The rents rise continually. As has been mentioned already, the most recent report from Savills Ireland predicts a 17% rental price increase in the next three years. The average cost to rent is €1,347. The caps of the housing assistance payment, HAP, and the various other schemes are much lower than that. Galway rents have risen by 47% since 2008. For God's sake, even IBEC is calling on us to have a public construction programme. That is exactly what we need on public land. It is tragic. Galway is a city that does not need to have a housing crisis. We have land that has been zoned as residential. We have land at Ceannt Station. We have land near the docks, not to mention the institutional land. The missing part is a master plan. Lately the Government has recognised that there is a crisis in Galway and it has set up a task force. Can the Minister of State update us on when that task force has met, what its aims are and whether it will give us three quarterly reports? My time is coming to an end. I support much of the motion and the amendments proposed by Sinn Féin and Solidarity.

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