Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have not just raised this recently. I have raised it consistently since the task force was set up. A task force was set up because of the housing emergency. I appreciate the Minister of State's efforts in getting the report but I would appreciate his comments on how it has taken this long to get a task force to produce a report in a city where the rents are rising 19.4%, where the homeless services are non-existent and where we have a waiting list of over 4,000 households and people on waiting lists for ten or 12 years. In addition, the docks are doing their own thing, Ceannt Station is doing its own thing and the Land Development Agency is doing something else. We are now hearing that the docks area will produce a master plan some time in the future and it will primarily involve four blocks of affordable housing. In a city that is crying out for public housing, there is no master plan. We have no master plan in the city. Can the Minister of State believe that? Each area is doing its own thing. I would have thought that the task force would have analysed and highlighted the issues and brought them back to the Minister years ago, saying what the problem was and what it was going to do.

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