Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am not really sure how many times I can step up and speak on housing. I do this tonight in the context of tomorrow's meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice and Equality, when we have a number of groups coming in to talk about access to justice. One of them is the Mercy Law Resource Centre which stated:

We make this submission at a time of desperate crisis in homelessness. As of October 2019 there were 10,514 people homeless in Ireland. This is the highest number since the Department started recording these figures. Of those recorded in the official statistics as homeless, 1,733 were families and 3,826 were children.

A couple of days ago I asked what figure is the one at which the Government will realise its policies are not working. I wonder how many more times any of us on this side of the House can stand up, but we have a duty to do so. It is a privilege to be here. We are on a good salary and we have a duty to highlight that the Government's policies are directly causing the housing crisis. The Government has to realise that at some stage. If the figures for homelessness do not capture its attention, perhaps Galway city will. We have lots of public land, we have land zoned residential, yet we have a major housing crisis. The Government declared it a rent pressure zone, yet we have people who are on a waiting list for a house since 2004 or 2005. Yesterday in my office I looked at a situation where somebody has been 14 years on a waiting list and never once been offered a house, which in itself raises serious questions about housing policy. Now that person and the family have been in emergency accommodation for over six months. Perhaps that might draw the attention of the Minister of State. Perhaps the fact that we have 183,312 empty properties throughout the country would draw his attention. As regards the schemes the Government has introduced, the repair and leasing scheme since 2017 has led to 102 homes coming on-stream. The vacant housing reuse strategy 2018-2021 is notable for its lack of urgency and its lack of a plan. There are absolutely no numbers coming back under that strategy. A report into vacant properties in rural areas, which I welcomed, and a pilot project selected six towns, significantly none of them in Galway city or county. There is absolutely no urgency in publishing that report. There is no cost-benefit analysis of the Government's policies in terms of the HAP and RAS long-term initiatives, or on the cost of them as opposed to direct building on public land.

I am glad the Minister of State is nodding. It is very good that he is nodding. The previous Minister, Deputy Coveney, also agreed with me when I spoke. I get a little confused. He agreed with me when I said that development in Galway is developer-led, that there is an absence of an overall plan and that the common good does not come into the picture at all. He nodded and agreed. It is in the Official Report. I am not sure where the difficulty lies if the Minister of State is agreeing with me. It is not social housing, but public housing on public land which will give the message to the market that the Government is serious about the provision of homes. A home is not a commodity to be traded. It is the most basic requirement for people to live, to have warmth and to enable them to participate in a democracy.

I would expect the senior Minister to come in here tonight and, instead of trading insults and standing up as if it was a debate in Trinity College or one of the other universities, to come in with a written speech and outline what progress has been made on the five pillars in respect of the provision of social housing. The Taoiseach misled the Dáil today regarding the number of social houses. Public housing or social housing does not mean HAP to me. The Minister of State said HAP was a temporary measure, which is a complete misinterpretation of the legislation brought in by the previous Fine Gael and Labour Party Government. It was brought in as a long-term solution to the housing crisis and the provision of housing. It is an integral part of the problem. The first of the five pillars was to address homelessness and there is failure on that. The next was to accelerate social housing and there is failure on that because social housing for the Government is HAP. The next was to build more homes and the Government has made some progress on that. The next was to improve the rental sector and there is absolutely no progress on that. It is impossible. In Galway, the Simon Community has written report after report on the Locked Out of the Market studies. Another pillar was to utilise existing housing and there is utter failure on that. There are over 183,000 units empty in the country. At the very least, the senior Minister should have gone through this and said, "This is where we are, this is where we are going, bear with us." Instead of that, he came in and traded insults. We have pleaded with the Government to call a housing emergency. Galway City Council and its councillors, who are not known for being radical, called for an emergency in April this year. At what stage will the Government use its ears to listen and stop giving glib responses?

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