Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Despite my efforts and those of my colleagues on the left, I am ashamed to be part of a system and a Dáil which think it is okay to have 10,397 people, of whom 3,873 are children, in homelessness as of 29 October. We do not even have the up-to-date figures. I am deeply ashamed of that even though I have done my best. I listened to an eight and a half page speech from the Minister of State. He is a very logical and reasonable man who is very helpful. However, he is here when the senior Minister should be here. He is here trying to defend something that cannot be defended. A Government with a little sense would say at this point, when 10,397 people are homeless, that it is doing something seriously wrong. It would forget ideology and simply say that it is doing wrong. It is not okay to normalise or institutionalise homelessness. We are trying to get over our history of institutionalisation and, once again, the vast majority of people in these institutions are women and children, and some men.

As I speak, 306 families in Galway are homeless. We do not have the figures for children. As of this week, the CEO of Galway City Council told Galway Bay FM that 90 families have been served with a notice to quit. I welcome the Minister of State's comment that HAP is a temporary measure but that is a sleight of hand and is certainly not correct because the change introduced in 2013 by Fine Gael and the Labour Party was a fundamental change in housing policy. In the language used locally to us, we were told that it was the only game in town. Not one house was constructed in Galway city from 2009 onwards. The Minister of State has acknowledged this. The reason no houses were constructed is because money was used for other items such as HAP rather than on building houses. It is not accurate, therefore, to describe HAP as a temporary measure. It was a permanent policy change and therein lies the crux of the problem.

We then saw the use of HAP increase exponentially. More than €500 million is now spent on HAP, not to mention the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, and long-term leasing. The Government's policy is to actively support a market that has utterly failed in every aspect of housing. There is a place for landlords and the private market but the Government must be i lár an aonaigh. It must in the middle of the fair. It must send a message to the market that a home is not a commodity to be traded. It is a place to live - the most basic requirement before anybody can live a healthy life and participate in a democracy. That is the message the Government must send out.

Regarding the terrible housing crisis in Galway city, people have been waiting 15 years for a house during which time they have never been offered one. I would like the Minister of State to take this on board. How can it be that somebody on a waiting list for 14 or 15 years has never once been offered a social house?

What is wrong with that system?

In response to the crisis, the Government finally set up a task force which I welcomed. It put senior people on it, although some of them had presided over the failure to highlight the housing crisis in the first place. Be that as it may, we have heard nothing from that task force. The announcement of its establishment was made to great fanfare - inappropriate fanfare I might add during a housing crisis - but we have still heard nothing. No minutes have been published. There is no evidence of meetings being held. Most importantly, there is no plan for a city which has no overall housing plan. The Minister of State’s colleague, the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Coveney, agreed with me that Galway has, once again, developer-led development. There are acres of land around Ceannt Station and the docks, as well as other public and institutional lands. However, we have no overall master plan to build public housing for everybody and for the common good. Everybody should have a right to public housing, if that is what he or she wants, with a controlled rent. That sorts out the whole problem of stigma and the utter nonsense of who should live beside whom. Public housing must be built. There is any number of precedents across the world.

I was at my wits’ end listening to an eight-page statement which did not reflect on the seriousness of the problem or offer to change policy.

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