Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward the motion. I welcome the opportunity to speak on it. Housing has become the single biggest issue not just in Dublin and other cities but right across the country. It is an issue in every rural constituency, including my own in Galway East, where we do not have enough houses being built.

I will focus first on social housing. I accept there has been a huge turnabout in terms of local authorities building social houses. It is a welcome move that this is happening again. It is good to see the local authorities are back in a place where they are building good-quality housing estates. I acknowledge that. They are increasing the supply of social housing stock. However, we could be sleepwalking into a huge issue in this regard. The housing stock is increasing but the local authorities are not in a position to manage that stock. These properties, which are assets of the State, need to be managed properly. We must ensure the local authorities are adequately resourced to keep estates up to standard, with external painting, green areas and so on dealt with on an annual basis. We need estates that people are proud to live in, where standards are kept high and do not drop. I have seen too many cases over the years where housing estates were built and, within two years, some houses were boarded up. This shows a total disrespect for taxpayers' money. It must stop and the only way to stop it is by having proper, effective and strict management of estates.

Galway County Council relies on housing liaison officers to do all this work. Twenty years ago, they would have been able to manage some of it. Now, with all the paperwork they have to do, they seldom leave the office and seldom visit an estate. If there is an issue between two neighbours on an estate, it is not dealt with and next we see glass broken in a window or something else happening. Then there is the question of whose problem it is to fix any damage. An estate that was built in Tuam in the 1980s was demolished 25 years later because it had gone to rack and ruin. This is no fault of the local authority. It does not have the resources to maintain the estate, keep it up to standard and ensure the tenants who are given houses respect them and keep them as if they are their own home. Not all tenants will do so but there are some who will degrade a property very fast. As a result, standards drop very quickly. It is important that we keep estates up to the highest standards at all times.

If we do not deal with this issue properly, we will have a huge problem in five or ten years' time, with people shouting and roaring about how estates are so dilapidated. For some reason, the approved housing bodies seem to have more resources than local authorities for the management of estates. They have estate managers on site almost on a full-time basis. Their estates are kept to a better standard than local authority estates. I cannot understand how they can do that while local authorities cannot. The reality is that the resources are not being delivered to councils to perform that role. We will face problems unless we address this issue. Now is the time to do something about it.

The private housing market is dysfunctional at this time. It is having a negative effect on the entire economy.

We have expanding FDI companies that are trying to recruit but they cannot do so because houses are not available for people to buy where they want to live and work. I am referring to houses of quality and new houses. In every town in Galway East I know of, there are no new private housing estates. In fact, in Tuam, the county town, a private housing estate has not been built since around 2008. Social housing is being built but not private housing. There are many reasons for this. First, our planning process has gone deeper and deeper into environmental and other processes, which costs money and slows the whole process down. The total failure of An Bord Pleanála to deal with submissions in a timely fashion is creating havoc. I have received correspondence from someone involved with a development of over 100 houses in Galway city that is with An Bord Pleanála. The report has been done since January 2023 but the board has still not made a decision on it. It is absolutely crazy. Who would get involved in that business?

The failure of the Government to provide the necessary funding to Irish Water to develop the infrastructure we require is a failure. In Galway county alone, there are over 30 towns and villages in which development has been frozen for the simple reason that they do not have municipal wastewater treatment plants. At the same time, we are trying to push people into towns and villages. We do not want them building houses in the rural areas because doing so is not right for the environment; yet, in the village of Corofin, which is in my parish and which is famous for football, we cannot build any houses other than one-off houses. We have a large tract of land right in the heart of the village but we cannot build on it because of an An Bord Pleanála decision in 2008 that stipulated that any development would be premature until a wastewater treatment plant was put in place.

Let me follow on from that example. When I became a member of Galway County Council in 2004, we had a list of projects to be done. A feasibility study was carried out on building a municipal treatment plant for Corofin. This proposal was lost when Irish Water was set up and it has not gained momentum since. There are 30 villages in this position right across the county.

Two years ago, the Government announced €50 million for wastewater treatment plants. A couple of months ago, it announced that we would probably not see them in place for another two to three years. One of them is in Craughwell, where raw sewage is pouring out of houses. While we talk about the environment and protecting it, and while I know the Minister of State's heart is in the right place, we have to ensure that if we do not do things right and put the ducks in a row, we will create more environmental hazards than we solve.

There is no affordable housing in my constituency and there probably will not be any for at least another two or three years. I hear some of my colleagues talk about setting up a national building company. Considering what happened with Irish Water, it will take at least five years to set up and another five before it will deliver houses. Therefore, we have to have some common sense and do things in an emergency way right now if we are to solve this issue in the short term. Then we should put long-term measures in place. I thank the Chair for his forbearance.

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