Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important motion this evening. It is important to reflect on what is happening right now. We have people in every constituency, including in my own constituency of Galway East, who cannot find a house to rent and people who want to buy a house but cannot find one to buy. We also have a situation whereby the social housing waiting list is growing and there is so much pressure. The housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme is not working as it should. People who have houses to rent are not willing to participate in the HAP scheme any more because there are too many risks involved. We must look at all of this and determine how we are going to push forward and build ourselves out of this crisis. That is what we must focus on.

On the affordable housing scheme, the numbers announced yesterday are very disappointing. A total of 75 houses for Galway county is not a huge amount in the second largest county, geographically, in the country. If one looks at the multiplying factors across all counties, the scheme has been started, it has been called an affordable scheme but it is going to take a hell of a long time to get to a stage where it is effective and working.

I will now repeat things I have said previously in this House in relation to opportunities that we have. Why not make existing derelict houses in our towns and villages affordable for people to go in, build, occupy and live in? The Minister for Finance is in disagreement with me on extending the help-to-buy scheme to these properties. It is fine if he does not want to do that, but the Government needs to take strong, effective action to make these properties available so that people can go in, do them up and turn them into liveable spaces in our towns and villages.

It is very important that we tackle that rather than saying we cannot do this or that. There are 44,000 of these houses in the Northern and Western Regional Assembly area. A survey has been done by the regional assembly so the figures are there. Really and truly, what we need to do is take action on that.

The other thing the Government announced was a €50 million fund to improve the wastewater needs in rural towns and villages in Ireland, which is a scheme under which the local authorities can apply for funding. There are so many of our towns and villages that do not have any wastewater treatment plant. They are locked out of the planning system and the construction system because they cannot apply for planning permission on the basis that they will not be granted it and, even if they were granted it, that would be appealed to An Bord Pleanála on the basis that any type of development would be premature.

There are towns around Galway, such as Abbeyknockmoy, Corofin and Craughwell, to mention three, where, right now, we could be building houses if we had a municipal treatment plant. Sites are available for affordable houses and we could get on with it. They are within easy distance for connection for work to Galway city or Athlone, which is just off the motorway, but we are not doing that. Some €50 million is a pathetic amount of money to put into that. If that is what it is for, it probably needs to be ten times that sum if we are to tackle this problem. What we are doing in Galway might shock the Minister of State as a member of the Green Party. We are now talking about putting in clusters of houses where we will allow people to build five houses in a cluster and put five individual septic tanks into towns and villages. I do not think that is environmentally sustainable. That is what we are doing because we are not getting the money to have municipal treatment plants in these towns.

We need to take it for what it is. We need to make sure that this problem is sorted out, once and for all. We have so much opportunity but we seem to get caught up in talking about schemes and how we are going to develop them. I know the local authorities, including Galway County Council, are working hard to deliver housing and they are delivering some housing, but they need a hell of a lot more support, resources, management, funding and infrastructure to do it.

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