Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak. It is important that, as Irish people, we take stock. We have an incredible challenge in front of us in this country. We have seen many thousands of people come from Ukraine, we have asylum seekers and, of course, our own people who cannot find housing.

We have the perfect storm. I will address the issue of asylum seekers and Ukrainians first. I commend the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, for the work they have been doing in the past 18 months. A tsunami of pressure has been coming at them with the numbers of people coming in. Issues have arisen. Some providers of accommodation were not paid on time, but I hope all that has been rectified at this stage.

The biggest problem we have is a small thing really. It is the idea of secrets or a lack of information which allows the wrong type of information to grow and multiply unchallenged. I saw it in my constituency. A few months ago there was a rumour that people were going into a hotel in Loughrea and into a convent in Tuam. The rumour was out there. I received a lot of phonecalls from genuine people who wanted to know what was happening, to see if they could help and to prepare for the arrival. Many months later, I still have not received any information other than it is not asylum seekers. That is about it. That is all I was told. It is important that public representatives are given information and are part of the solution, rather than them being kept out of the equation. In reality, if a building is being done up, the people inside who are doing it up know what it is for. That allows the word to spread and then all kinds of permutations are put in. The people who want the opportunity will take it to spread every kind of story and to scaremonger. That is why we must look again at how we communicate and how we engage with local stakeholders at an early stage to ensure we have a transition.

I remember a few years ago we had an issue in one of our towns. Asylum seekers were coming in. I brought together the hotel operator and the business people in the town and we sat down. The asylum seekers arrived. When the contract was up in the hotel, the local people were ringing me to ask if I could get it extended because the people had blended into the community. There was never a word about them being there. Now Ukrainians are there and they are also part of the community. It is how we deal with the secretive approach. When I say secretive, I mean information is not given out. We do not want to know what people are thinking but when a decision is made we need to know how the process will work from there.

Leaving that aside, the biggest problem we have is accommodation. When people come into the country, as an Irish person, I think we should treat them with dignity. We should not have them sleeping in tents on the side of the road. We should not expose them to being attacked by individuals who do not want them there. I have always said this. People talk about modular homes as if they will be the panacea to solve all our problems. They have no notion of doing so. Coming from a construction background, I know what I am talking about. The sooner we stop looking at modular homes or off-site construction as a panacea to solve our problems the better.

We need to go back and look at the housing emergency. We have rules, regulation, assessments, feasibility studies and approvals. Housing has become a consultant's paradise and no progress is being made. We have turned what was a simple process of building houses into a quagmire. I came across a term the other day. I think it was an tAthair Micheál McGréil who said about bureaucracy in Ireland, that it has gone mad. He did not mean gone mad in the head. It stands for maximum administrative delay. That is what we have created. In all our systems we have created the maximum administrative delay. It is not anyone's fault. We have knee-jerk reactions to trying to solve something that went wrong in a process in the past. We nail it to the mast so it cannot move again. We must shake that off. We have an emergency. We must create flexibility and a scene where we are actually building houses and not looking at them on paper.

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