Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank members of the Rural Independent Group for allowing me to speak ahead of them on this by way of exception. I appreciate that. I agree with Deputy Verona Murphy on a number of issues, but certainty not on the Planning Regulator and the manner in which he has been portrayed. It ignores how the Planning Regulator's role arose. It was because of a planning tribunal that cost a fortune, went on for years and found systemic corruption at every level of the planning process. Perhaps I am misquoting a little bit, but that was the gist of it.

I agree with the Deputy that there is a housing crisis but disagree that the market is being inhibited and cannot get its chance to provide. It is because the market has been given free rein that we have a housing crisis. There is no other explanation for it. We handed everything over lock, stock and barrel to the market to provide and it utterly failed to do so. We have changed housing from a human right and the most basic necessity into a commodity to be traded on the market. Unfortunately, Fine Gael and the Labour Party copper-fastened that in 2014 or 2015 when they enshrined the housing assistance payment in our legislation and said there was no other game in town. That was the language used at Galway City Council. Encapsulated and enshrined was that if you were on HAP, you were then appropriately housed. That was the market getting full ownership of the Government's responsibility to provide public housing.

I agree with the motion brought by Sinn Féin. Once again, I find myself thanking that party for bringing it. It is bringing in a Bill to amend the Planning and Development Act and to allow for the enforcement of existing legislation and regulations on short-term lettings which are not being enforced. I know the Minister of State has inherited a situation but can he imagine that Sinn Féin, and we are supportive of this, is introducing basic legislation because the existing regulations are not being enforced? What kind of a farcical situation is this? The regulations were brought in on foot of a report by the Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government in 2018. It made 13 recommendations for the then Minister to regulate the short-term letting sector. The 19 regulations were introduced on foot of that. Also recommended was that a study of the impact of short-term letting on Ireland's housing and rental market be commissioned. It was commissioned and that study recommended that we needed further research.

Whether this legislation is wrong or right and sorts out the problem or does not, we have no choice but to support it because it puts the focus on the madness of what has been created. If the Minister of State has any say, let us go back to what the problem is here, as with climate change. When the National Parks and Wildlife Service was set up, it was determined that it would fail. It was under-resourced, under-financed and demonised, just like the Planning Regulator is being demonised. We are ignoring what has happened. When we looked at climate change we set up the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which should have been the focal point, but it was left under-resourced and so on. When we then go to housing, we see we have a jigsaw and we bring pieces in. During Covid we were supposed to have a fundamental change and brought in some measures protecting tenants. They are all gone now.

I turn to the CEO of Galway City Council. I never knew why we had to change from managers. I believe a city council is there to serve and a manager is there to manage those services. We have gone down the corporatisation road on everything and now we have a CEO. He stated in an update to councillors on 16 May that some 2,000 private landlords were leaving the rental market in Ireland every year.

Half of them are issuing notices of termination because they are selling the property. "The exodus of private landlords from the rental sector is being mirrored in Galway City with the latest figures showing that 37% of Notices of Termination issued ... [and so on] are for the purposes of sale with the consequent further depletion of private rented stock." It goes on and on.

Karina Timothy, the western regional services manager for Threshold, stated in a local newspaper that the rental market was at crisis point and unsustainable. She pointed out that, theoretically, Galway city and several other areas are rent pressure zones. Theoretically, there should not be an annual rent increase of above 2%. She stated it was clear from the report showing double-digit rent rises that the zones were not working. As regards County Galway outside the city, it is clear that rents are rising even more rapidly there. Yesterday or the day before, I heard of a four-bedroom house for rent in County Galway and asked people to guess what was the rent for that house. They guessed it was €1,500 or €1,800. The rent is nearer to €3,000. That is the position.

We have reached a stage where what has been created is an obscenity. I do not blame the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, who is present, for that but I will blame him if he does not stand up and say that he will not be part of the proposed solution that is market-driven and creating the problem. I will support him if he stands up and says that. It is time for change, just like it is time for change in the context of having learned from Covid. We need fundamental and transformative change in respect of climate and housing. The primary message is that having security is the most fundamental aspect of a democracy, but we do not have it in Ireland. A person very close to me whom I will not name - he or she would not thank me for doing so - may be homeless next week. Fortunately, I might be able to pick up the pieces a little bit, given that I am earning a salary. I am using this as an example. That person is expected to put on a suit and go into work but he or she has no place to stay from next Tuesday. There is no place to get in the cities of Dublin or Galway.

Let us look at the Locked Out of the Market report published by the Simon Community. I tire of quoting from it but it is my duty to do so. "The Simon Communities of Ireland’s quarterly Locked Out report shows yet another stark decline in the availability of affordable properties." One property was available within the HAP limits and it was in the suburbs of Galway. There were no properties in Galway city centre. There is €280,000 to deal with homelessness in Galway city and county. Government expenditure on HAP, RAS and leasing is more than €1 billion. Is the Minister of State aware that when I and other Deputies on this side of the House repeatedly tried to raise the issue of HAP rising continuously, we were laughed at? HAP should go. Obviously, it cannot go tomorrow, but it has to go. It is artificially keeping the market sky high.

Evictions are increasing. It is all here in this information from Focus Ireland. I pay tribute to Rory Hearne on his continued analysis of the situation. One in four children in Ireland, or 281,000 children, is growing up in the private rental sector. These children are in precarious and insecure living conditions. Obviously, that is very stressful and leads to all sorts of development regression. It is even more challenging for children with special needs. Half of all one-parent families are in poverty after they pay their housing costs. Half of all one-parent families are renting.

I refer to the Aran Islands. A person wrote to me to say he or she would love to stay on one of the Aran Islands. There are no properties available there. There are no properties in Ceantar na nOileán. There is house after house, however, left derelict. There is no policy for the islands yet. In 2019, with the help of the Dáil, we passed a motion for a policy for sustainable living on the islands. That policy has not yet come to pass. We are still being told it is coming. I gCeantar na nOileán, i gcroí-lár na Gaeltachta, tá neart foirgnimh agus tá siad ag titim as a chéile. Tá scoil á dúnadh i Leitir Calaidh, tá cinneadh déanta ag an mbord bainistíochta agus tá daoine as an Úcráin ag iarraidh cur fúthu cibé cén áit is féidir leo seilbh tithíochta a fháil ach níl tithíocht ar fáil. Níl an chosúlacht ar an scéal go bhfuil aon rud ar siúl ag an Rialtas ach Sinn Féin agus na daoine atá ar an taobh seo den Teach a mhaslú seachas seasamh suas agus a rá go bhfuil ciall cheannaithe aige agus nach féidir linn leanúint ar aghaidh mar sin. Instead, we get ridiculous back-and-forth comments that I will not even repeat.

We have a housing emergency. It must be declared and appropriate action must be taken to right what has happened. That can only be done with acknowledgement. The Minister stood there earlier and asked for our co-operation. I will give him none. His ideology is to the private market. If the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, stands up and tells me his ideology is practical - to provide public housing on public land - he will have my absolute 100% support, but that is not what has been said and I am tired of the duplicity and hypocrisy of the language being used.

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