Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Some 441 approved housing bodies came back. More than 441 approved housing bodies exist and we wonder about accountability and the absence of it.

I am talking about all of this in the context of Galway city, which has absolutely no hope to give applicants on the housing waiting list. I am not given to exaggeration. There is absolutely no hope. I have the minutes of the task force. The task force was there since 2019. It was ostensibly set up because we had a crisis. What has happened since is that we have changed the name of it. That is very good. We have a new chair and have slimmed down the membership of it. We now have a housing task force for delivery, which is a very nice change, but we have had no change. There are no affordable houses and the targets are all below. I will not use my words; these are direct quotes from the minutes. It refers to the council struggling for accommodation provision through HAP and RAS, the only game in town. They state there is a huge problem with lack of infrastructure in the city and county and that it is very difficult to deliver balanced development. With regard to social housing delivery, there is Galway's 2024 target, the projected pipeline is 136, and only one has been delivered to date. One would ask what is happening here? A task force should sit for a few months, do a quick analysis, come back again a few weeks later, do another quick analysis and see what is going on. The Simon Community has told us that there are no more properties available under HAP or RAS under any of the discretionary.

I think there is a way out of this. I would hope there would be a change of government. I am not given to saying that from here; I am more given to looking at issues. We need a change of government with an absolute change of policy that recognises the provision of a home as a basic human right. The prices of property and our homes must come down. We have to face that. We have to phase out HAP completely. Obviously, we cannot do it overnight but we cannot keep feeding the market so that prices stay up.

We are looking at legislation today that received absolutely no scrutiny whatsoever, ostensibly to facilitate the falling off a cliff of the registration date. I have no problem supporting that. However, other parts were put into the Bill without proper scrutiny. It is no way to do business and that is only one tiny piece of legislation. God help us tomorrow night with the planning Bill that is going nowhere.

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