Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Doherty and his colleagues for bringing this motion before the Dáil and allowing us to participate in this discussion. I do not think the motion will make one bit of difference to the Government’s approach in housing policy. We stand here for a different reason. We stand to show there is a different way to deal with the housing crisis and to let people know there is a difference between the Government and its three parties and those who stand here, not for the sake of opposition or for the sake of being negative but to give hope and vision to the people who voted us in. Tonight we have a motion that seeks to penalise the investor funds at a certain percentage. There are also amendments which seek to do it at a higher rate. I agree with that. However it is just part of the overall problem.

In the speech the Minister of State read out it is significant that he said we are blinded by ideology on this side of the House. That is one of the most misleading things I have heard in my life because the ideology is completely on the side of the Government parties which believe that housing is a commodity to be traded on the market. "The market will provide" is the motto of this Government and every government, although they use deceitful language to hide that. When the market fails, as it has demonstrably failed, then it comes up with every possible scheme to help the market in every way to make a profit and it tells us it is for our good. At every level, the language it uses is disingenuous, deceitful and unacceptable.

It is extraordinary that in the Minister of State’s speech tonight he did not mention the homeless figure. The homeless figure is not worth mentioning. That is an extraordinary omission when we have seen homelessness rise to the highest point. I will quote it: 13,514 people are homeless, including 4,105 children. In 2020, and it has worsened since then, 121 homeless people died. That is roughly ten a month. "Roughly" is the right word, in terms of people sleeping rough and rough figures. There is a complete acceptance of that by successive governments which see this as collateral damage.

Look at Galway city with which I am very familiar. I spent 17 years of my life as a city councillor and watched with despair and disgust – words which I used in relation to Gaza – as the housing crisis was allowed intensify. We stopped building public housing in 2009 and we never built another house until 2020 or 2021.

I have a constituent who has been on a housing list for 18 years. We are told by the city council that it cannot give us any clue, idea or time when that person will be allocated a house. Even worse, we are told that because that person is on a RAS scheme, they are deemed a special transfer applicant. The Minister of State might listen to this language and help me to tell this person after 18 years on a waiting list for a council house, he has been deemed a special transfer applicant.

To add insult to injury, the council has said that this means this person is not technically on the housing waiting list after 18 solid years. Because that person was not faced with an immediate notice of termination, he was not considered worthy of any consideration but he will remain on that special transfer list. God knows what it means. I have said many times that we abolished limbo but we have kept a limbo of some sort with the various waiting lists we have. We have a waiting list for those who are not in receipt of HAP, a waiting list for those in HAP - I do not know what status they have - and a waiting list for those in receipt of RAS and presumably the rent supplement. We stand here and talk about a housing crisis, ach tá an chluas bhodhar á tabhairt dúinn ón Rialtas. It is not even listening to us. It is so concerned with giving pat responses that are prepared by advisers but bear no reality to what is happening on the ground.

What are my solutions with regard to Galway city? We recognise there is a housing crisis. We either abolish the task force that was set up more than three years ago or we ask it to produce a full report with an analysis of what it sees as being the reason for the crisis. We look at a city that has absolutely no overall plan or city architect. We have a Land Development Agency that is just about to complete negotiations with the port company to purchase public land at a high price so that it can construct premium housing. Can you imagine premium housing in a city where somebody has been on a waiting list for 18 years? At any given time we have empty houses that are owned by the city council. There are 100 of them. I do not need to exaggerate. In my own area of the Claddagh there is a house not too far from me which I pass every day and has remained empty for more than three years. Up to three years ago it was fit to house somebody. Somebody died and it was left empty. That is one of 100 houses that I could list. The answer from the city council is that it is only a tiny percentage of its social housing stock.

I would like to stop the silly pitter-patter across the floor of the House about ideological differences and recognise that housing policy is an utter failure when that many people are homeless. They are the people we count. We do not count hundreds, if not thousands, of others.

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