Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion, which I fully support. I missed the beginning of the debate so I am not sure whether the Government is agreeing with the motion. The Minister might clarify that.

I am sick and tired of the mantra and ideology coming from both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, through the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach, that we are ideologues on this side of the House. I have repeatedly said that I am a proud Galwegian and a practical, pragmatic politician. Since the day I came into this House in February 2016, I have begged and implored, tabled motions with my colleagues and joined with other motions, to highlight the housing crisis. We have appealed to the Government to have a referendum and place the right to housing in the Constitution because a home is a basic human right. The most fundamental things required by people are shelter and security so that they can participate actively in a democracy. Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have repeatedly demonised us, laughed at us and placed us in a box - all inappropriately - to justify their housing programme, which is not sustainable.

In Galway, people have been on a waiting list for a house for 15 years. I do not need to exaggerate because the figures speak for themselves. Once, councillors could go with applicants to the city council and give them some hope, telling them that if they did their time on the list they would get a house in seven to ten years. At least they could do that.

Not alone is that chance gone, but now the council will not even facilitate us with a meeting. That is now gone completely, and was gone well before the onset of Covid-19.

We had a construction programme in Galway. It is important to give a context because this crisis has not just arisen. Someone referred to it as just becoming more focused lately. This is a crisis which has been created by ongoing Government policy. The policy was to stop building public housing and to hand over the process, lock, stock and barrel, to investment funds with various names to look after homes and provide them in any manner they saw fit. That is what happened.

I spent 17 years of my life at local authority level. We fought to make it more accountable. We fought to get quarterly reports, which, in fairness, the management gave us. It told us what the problem was, the solution and the construction programme. From 2009 onwards, the category for housing construction was suspended. That continued in 2009, 2010 and thereafter until April 2019 when the Government was forced to set up a task force. I have begged and implored the Minister for access to the various letters and he has finally given them to me. I would not call them reports. I thank him for giving them to me and I have read them all. I would have thought, however, that a task force, by its very nature, was a recognition that there was a problem, and that the nature of the problem would then be analysed and solutions devised. What seems to have happened here, however, is that the task force is ongoing, with many meetings receiving many presentations. However, that could have been done at council level. What we wanted from a task force was an analysis of the problem. The Minister does not have to agree with me but surely an analysis of the problem is the most basic requirement before we can deal with the solution.

I will raise again the Simon Communities in Ireland report. It regularly does a three-day snapshot. In March 2021, its snapshot looked at 16 areas all over the country. With regard to Galway, it found "There was an average of 65 properties available to rent in Galway City Centre over the study period, similar to the 62 properties available in the December 2020 study". Can we imagine that? It also noted that only two properties fitted into at least one housing assistant payment, HAP, category. This was "the first time a property has been within a HAP limit in six study periods". We will return to the HAP in a minute. Even with the system in place, however, no houses are available under any of the categories in Galway, except one or two.

All the details about Galway are here in the Simon Communities in Ireland report, Locked Out of the Market Study March 2021, in table 12 for Galway city centre and table 13 for Galway city suburbs. I invite the Minister to look at those tables. Before he makes comments again about those of us on this side of the House being ideologues, he might look at this report and make his comments relate to reality. The reality is that we are down to one or two properties being available under the HAP limits in Galway city, and that has been repeatedly the case with these snapshot studies. In addition, rents in Galway have gone up and up. They came down a little in Dublin but have gone up by 4.6% in Galway city.

Some progress has been made, and I thank the task force and management in that regard. It is not, however, progress of the type we need to sort out the housing crisis. The State must be central to the policy. Housing is not a commodity to be traded and given over to investment funds. It is a basic human right. That is where we differ. People should be given choices of whether to buy or rent a house, depending on the different stages of their lives. They should not be forced into a mortgage for any number of years to suit the ideology of the Government. We should of course support and encourage people to purchase houses. However, that should be done on a balanced basis, with the State building public housing for everyone to give them a choice and change the limits.

Fine Gael and the Labour Party brought in the HAP system in 2014 or thereabouts. From that point onwards, the Government gave up any pretence of building houses. Not alone did it do that but anyone who went on to the HAP was taken off the housing waiting list. I spent much of my time arguing over this point. I was told I was a liar. I have pointed out in the past that, no, I was a lawyer at that point and while there might be some overlap between liars and lawyers, I was not lying. That was the type of idiocy we had to go through because of the policy on HAP, where the Government wanted to hide the fact that people came off the housing waiting list.

From the Committee of Public Accounts, we knew that HAP payments were rising. My colleagues and I were laughed at when we said that the Government was bolstering the market. When I looked at the report from the task force, I found out that the average top-up payment in Galway is €56 per week from the tenant. That is the average top-up. These used to be hidden, under-the-counter payments. Now, they are over-the-counter payments. Rent for a two-bedroom house in my area in Galway city is €2,000. It is nothing short of scandalous.

What am I asking for? I am not asking to argue. I am not asking to roar and shout. I am asking the Minister to recognise that there is a housing crisis and that the Government must be central to the solution by building public housing on public land.

In the minute and a bit left to me, I return to the situation in Galway. I attended a presentation on the redevelopment of the harbour in the city recently and what is planned in that regard. At least 17 acres are redundant to need and the land is now to be sold off to the highest bidder or a deal will be done with the Land Development Agency rather than hand over that land to the city council, when we have a housing crisis. Ceannt Station is also being developed, and that is a developer-led project on fantastic land in the middle of the city. There is no provision for social or public housing and no master plan for that site. The university is developing a plan for another area, Nuns' Island, and the city council is undertaking work as part of the Dyke Road and Sandy Road regeneration plan as well.

We have land now. The task force tells us it will run out in 2023. In the meantime, what land we have we are allowing the harbour company to sell off to the highest bidder. We are also allowing all the other developments to go ahead with no master plan, city architect, overall vision or recognition that public land is essential to the solution of our housing crisis. I have repeatedly raised this issue, and I make no apology for doing so. I will continue to raise it for as long as I have a voice in this Dáil. The Minister should not insult me and my colleagues by telling us we are ideologues because it twists language on its head. The Government is the ideologue, and every policy it has pursued is for the market.

In my last ten seconds, I finish with a quote from Dr. Michael Byrne of the school of social policy in UCD. He points out regarding the Government's housing policy, that investment in the private rental market is "a major new development in the Irish housing system, and one which is likely to shape how Irish cities develop in future". He continues: "The Strategy for the Rental Sector document (Department of Housing, 2016b: 17), for example, highlights the benefits of institutional provision of rental housing in terms of its capacity". It then comes as a surprise to the Government that the investment funds are buying up estates and apartments.

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