Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

First, I think we have to stand back from what has been said here. We have to stop blaming politicians and past decisions that were made. The biggest problem we have now is that we are giving money to developers. We should not be giving money to developers. Housing should not be developer-led; it should be development-led. If the €450 million in funding was made available in my constituency in County Galway, it would build the infrastructure for the wastewater treatment plants that we need in our towns and villages in order to build houses. It would help with taking over and putting into public charge the private wastewater treatment plants that are littered across this country. There is nobody maintaining them. Residents in the housing estates are paying local property tax and feel they should not have to contribute towards the expensive maintenance of these wastewater treatment plants.

What is also happening is that more houses cannot be put on to these treatment plants' systems. In effect, we have frozen out the planning process for extensions or infill to existing private developments. We have also frozen out any development in any village or town where we do not have a municipal wastewater treatment plant.

We have growth centres around Galway city which would act as a place for people to live at an affordable price, rather than having to live in the city. They are finding that we cannot build houses. The council will be coming up with a plan to build houses in clusters in which we put five houses with individual sceptic tanks in towns and villages. I do not know where the environment will match up with that. We have much to do. We should be targeting towns' and villages' infrastructure and making sure that the wastewater treatment plants are in place. We should also make sure that the houses which are being built and which are deemed to be affordable are built for the people. The people should benefit from those houses being affordable.

Deputies refer to the problems they have in their constituencies. I have people who are living in caravans and mobile homes outside their parents' houses because they cannot rent, buy or build a house. Planning has frozen them out, and houses are not available. We have a perfect storm. We need to decide that this is a housing crisis and an emergency. We need to make sure that we put plans in place to deal with that emergency. We need to look seriously at derelict and vacant properties throughout the country. We should make them affordable for first-time buyers. We should make them affordable for people who need housing. A woman contacted me this morning. She is living with her parents. She was born in 1974, which would make her between 45 and 50 years old, and has two children. She is working but cannot rent a house because she cannot get one to rent.

The HAP scheme is not working. Unintended landlords are now pulling out of the HAP system because they are being burdened with too many rules and regulations and have no protections. In the event that a tenant refuses to pay his or her contribution to the HAP, the landlord does not get paid at all. That needs to be looked at. What are we doing to encourage people to make their houses available to people who are on the social housing list? There is a considerable amount of work to be done. This is an emergency. Let us get into dealing with it in depth in order that we might make some progress.

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