Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Galway city has been plagued with vacant sites and vacant homes for the last number of years. Just last week, I walked through Galway city centre and took a look at the number of vacant homes. At the same time, thousands of people are on the housing waiting list, thousands of people are paying huge rents and thousands of people are locked out of homeownership. Just this week, we saw the launch of the national development plan. One of its themes is about moving people and seeing populations grow in cities outside of Dublin and in rural areas. However, it has very little on specifics regarding infrastructure, be they roads, the western rail corridor or whatever. On the issue of vacant homes specifically, we cannot continue in Galway city to see these vacant homes and vacant sites lying idle, while so many people are locked out of secure accommodation. Can the Minister commit to stop this?

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