Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I remind myself daily of the salary I am earning and the privilege it is to stand here but it is increasingly difficult to listen to the narrative from the Taoiseach and the Government. Could they please let language mean something? I return to that theme over and over. There is no difficulty with these figures. This is the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage telling us that 26 houses were directly built by the city council in one year, and I gave the other figure for the county council. There are no HAP properties available in Galway city. That was the only game in town in my time as a councillor, and it remains so. There is not one single house available within the HAP rates or the discretionary rates.

There is a capacity problem at county and city council level because successive Governments have failed to resource them. They have no capacity. I have quoted the former city manager, who told the Government he will not meet the targets. Let us stop the doublespeak and gobbledygook about housing and realise that the Government must, through the local authorities, build public housing on public land. Let us look at Galway city as an example of what can be done with a master plan for the common good. On the docklands there are acres. Does the Taoiseach know what we are going to do there? We are going to build premium housing, not public housing because that is not good for the docklands area. That is not good for the ethos of the Government.

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