Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for confirming that he will look at it. It is a real concern to me that 6 acres of public land is being sold in a deal that we know nothing about, including the price, with no commitment to public housing. The task force was set up in 2019, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We have had a serious housing crisis in Galway. The task force has become a further layer of bureaucracy that is there to assist the managers in the county and the city to comply with their plans. The county is doing slightly better than the city. The city is not complying with its targets and we have a major housing problem. I would have thought a task force would look at the land we have and determine what public housing can be built on it to balance the market and bring the prices down. Instead of that, we have each area doing its own thing. There is Ceannt Station with assets of land within the city centre. The harbour area, Sandy Road and Headford Road are all operating on their own. There is no city architect, no overall plan, and a huge amount of vacancies in the planning department. We have a task force that we have to drag the reports from, and still there is no final report or analysis.

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