Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for confirming the minutes will be made available, which begs the question why it has to be raised in the Dáil before the minutes are made available. On focus, time and the different criteria he mentioned, we have the most serious housing crisis in Galway, on a par with Dublin. In Galway city, we have 302 homeless people and we have a city council that has achieved only 25% of its build target. HAP is the only show in town in Galway and that is difficult. We have HAP placement officers but we have a lack of staff responsible for providing homes for people on a permanent basis. The State has the land and if it does not, we should know about that by now. My information is the State has land that is zoned for residential use and it has institutional land and this task force has not produced a single report, even though it was set up before April of this year. It has had four meetings, which does not even amount to a meeting once per month. What has been decided? What is the work programme for the task force?

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