Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Here we go again, wishing the senior Minister was here, while acknowledging the bona fides of the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, who is present. It has come to a point where the Green Party must make a decision. What is the homelessness figure at which it will recognise that Government housing policy is utterly failing? The figure for today, while this debate is taking place, is 10,975 people recorded homeless, of whom 3,342 are children. That number is going up. It does not record the homelessness of people surfing on couches or in refuges and so on.

I listened carefully to the Minister's speech and that of the Deputy who was beside him at the time. I thank Sinn Féin for tabling the motion and allowing us an opportunity to speak on it. The whole gist of the Minister's argument took the form of a to-and-fro with Sinn Féin - I was going to say it was on a schoolboy level but that would be insulting schoolboys - rather than dealing with the issue. Housing for All is housing for some. Rebuilding Ireland was rebuilding it in the name of developers. What we have now is the result of failed policies. In the context of the homeless figures I mentioned, I received an email to tell me that a person has been on the list since January 2010, waiting for a house for more than 12 years. That person will be going into their 13th year on the list in January. The response of the council is simply that, due to the shortage of accommodation, it has no idea when that family will be housed. Ahead of that person who has been waiting 12 years there are 150 to 200 households on the east side and 150 to 200 households on the west side.

We set up a taskforce in Galway city and I welcomed it at the time. However, I have no idea what it is doing other than getting presentations. It was to give an annual report. Perhaps the Minister could confirm tonight whether that urgent taskforce has ever submitted an annual report on the situation in Galway. The Simon Community has been locked out of the market and is continuously telling us the situation is getting worse. Not a single house is available in Galway city under the discretionary scheme or the original HAP scheme. For the Minister then to engage in the to and fro to which I referred is an insult to those who are waiting for housing. It is a failure to acknowledge that it is the policy of this Government and previous Governments that has created this mess by treating homes as a commodity to be bought, sold and traded on the national and international markets.

The second thing the Minister did was to blame objectors. I do not look on people making submissions in respect of housing as objectors. Indeed, in the environmental area, they and the courts have saved us. People are entitled to make submissions. The planning system should be sufficiently robust and resourced to deal with those submissions within a reasonable and adequate period and then issue a decision. When we have the senior Minister, with almost 12,000 people homeless, telling us that is because of the objectors, there is a serious dilemma for the Green Party.

I do not like to go down that route but since 2016 I, along with my colleagues, have repeatedly appealed to successive Ministers to please declare an emergency, acknowledge there is a housing emergency and let us do something about it in terms of public housing on public land rather than the hypocrisy about a mixture of tenure. The in-built snobbery that is going on in the context of housing is disgraceful. Let us have public housing on public land. Let us deal with the waiting list and then extend the income limits so that lots of people can avail of the houses. The Government should be proud to be part of the market, balancing it and bringing down prices. It is an insult to speak about affordable housing. The concept of it is nuts. It bears no relationship to what the average person is earning. We want the declaration of an emergency and the provision of housing on public land.

In Galway, there is a ridiculous situation where a deal is being done with the LDA in respect of the docks, while something else is being done in respect of Ceannt Station and something else again in respect of Sandy Road. There is no overall master plan for the common good that sets out what is necessary in Galway. Such a plan does not exist.

Then we go to HAP, brought in by Fine Gael and the Labour Party. Any of us can make a mistake but there is no acknowledgement by the Labour Parry or Fine Gael that they ever made a mistake with HAP, which became the only game in town. In case there is any misunderstanding in that regard, in an article published in Eolas magazine back in 2017, members of the Department were falling over each other to congratulate themselves on this wonderful scheme, with one stating, "Landlord payments are growing at over €1 million per month while the rent run is increasing by €150,000 per month." They go on to say it is a fantastic scheme. The article states, "The Housing Agency’s Jim Baneham believes that HAP is making a real and positive difference in helping to address Ireland’s social housing challenge." It goes on. Many more names are quoted. I wonder where those people are now and what the two parties that brought in HAP are saying about it now that it is well over €1 billion or whatever the figure is. At this stage, it is Monopoly money. All this while the housing crisis continues to grow.

Then we had the Minister telling us about the help-to-buy scheme and saying that Sinn Féin and other members of the Opposition such as ourselves have failed to appreciate how good the scheme is. It has cost four times the original amount. We are onto the third or fourth report. Mazars tells us, "The scheme promotes demand for new housing in a market where the problems that exist are unequivocally supply constraints." It has cost four times more than was anticipated. Indeed, the Department of Finance failed to make proper projections in respect of the scheme. One third of the people availing of this scheme which the Minister has praised did not need help with their deposit, and so on. It has come to a point where one could despair but those on the streets, in hotels or various bed and breakfasts who have no hope need us to give them hope.

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