Dáil debates

Wednesday, 4 May 2022

Rising Rental Costs: Motion [Private Members]

 

8:40 pm

Photo of Catherine ConnollyCatherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for giving us the opportunity to speak once again, although I despair of talking continually, with a few minutes on different motions, trying to draw attention to a housing crisis repeatedly since the day I was elected in February 2016. We have a Minister who thinks it is a debating competition and scoring points across the floor at Sinn Féin in a manner that is not befitting the Dáil when we have a housing crisis.

One can quote any report. There are many. I am taking the Simon report because Simon has consistently done a snapshot every quarter over a number of days. Their latest one, in March, told us this is the 25th snapshot study. The Minister stood here and told us all of the facts, that things were improving.

The March 2022 Locked Out of the Market report shows yet another stark decline in the availability of affordable properties. The report goes on to mention, in particular, the end of Covid-enforced renter restrictions having a particular bearing. It states, "The private rental market is affected by an ongoing contraction in supply, increase in rental prices, and an overall lack of affordability", and "There was a strong decrease in the number of properties available to rent within the standard or discretionary HAP rates."

The report looks at Galway city and Galway county. In Galway city, there were seven properties available for rent. Not a single one of them came under the housing assistance payment, HAP, criteria. There were no properties affordable under the standard or the discretionary HAP rates for any of the households examined. There was only one property available to rent during the study period, at €1,430 a month - a one-bedroom property. Rents for three bedrooms ranged from €2,440 to €2,875. I wish I had more time to repeat the figures because they are stark and they make a mockery of what the Minister has told us.

Rents in Galway county rose at an extraordinary rate of 19%. That was up 122.9% from the trough. In Galway city, ours rose by 8.8%. While it might seem a little smaller, it was 115.5% from the trough.

Homelessness has increased in Galway. We have 280 adults in official homeless emergency accommodation. The figure nationally is, once again, approaching 10,000.

I am absolutely at my wit's end walking in Dublin and Galway and seeing people on the street when we are spending billions on a housing policy that is not relieving the situation but adding to it. I say that because at a conservative estimate, more than €1 billion per year is going straight into landlords' pockets. Never in my life have I decried landlords because we need them. We certainly need small builders. I have a conflict here because my father was a small builder in the past, among the many jobs he had. We need more small builders. What is absent here is a recognition that the Government is ideologically committed to the market to the point where it is putting billions into the private market to keep rents artificially high. The consequence of that is homelessness, high rents and a continuous lack of security for people. It is impossible for anybody in that situation to participate in democracy, make their views known or look after their children. The most crucial and fundamental thing is security of tenure in a house. A government, whoever is in government, has to commit to being in the market. It has to be i lár an aonaigh, in the middle of the market, providing public housing with absolutely no division between public housing, private housing and cost rental. There should be no such division.

There has been a housing task force in Galway for years and I have not seen a single report that has analysed the cause of the problem in Galway. In my limited experience, which was 17 years on a local council, I saw what was happening. From 2009, not a single public house was constructed. I repeat that not one single public house was constructed in Galway. All of the eggs went into the basket of the housing assistance payment, HAP. We were told in plain English that HAP was the only game in town. I saw a crisis build up year after year and it is still building up. The only difference is that we are now putting more money in for the wrong reasons.

Where is the audit from the Land Development Agency? It was set up on a non-statutory basis prior to the legislation and one of its first tasks was to give us an audit of all the public land available.

In the last minute of my available time, I am going to once again highlight that Galway city, one of the five cities destined to see an increase in population of 50%, has no plan for the common good. We have developers developing Ceannt Station. We have developers developing the docks, with a view to selling off property. There are other developments near the university and there is no overall plan.

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