Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for this opportunity but share the same concerns as my colleague, Deputy Collins, about the particular motion. I welcome Sinn Féin's work on this and the opportunity to speak on it. If we take any report, such as the Housing Commission report, they ask for a reset of policy. We have never discussed this. I will take more recent reports, such as the report from the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless from August 2024. It found that:

Ireland has experienced a drastic increase in the number of people in emergency accommodation over the last ten years ... significantly since the introduction of HAP ... [it is] confluence of [a number of] factors ... the shortage of social and affordable housing exacerbated by the austerity measures ... soaring rents ... in an unregulated rental sector. The increased number of families in homelessness rose sharply at the beginning of 2014 [and I remember it well] which was on excessive dependence on the private housing market entered a new phase. To mitigate the lack ... [we brought in HAP].

Not only did the Government bring in HAP, it was brought in as a permanent measure. The only solution was to get a private house and the Government would pay.

I refer to the findings of the Simon Community's report on top-up payments that are also part of this system, which is really shocking. I stand here today and will go forward to the people for election. I will be saying the exact same things all over again except matters are much, much worse. This report is the Simon Community's 35th snapshot. I pay tribute to the organisation. It is noteworthy that the senior Minister did not even refer to the report.

In fact, I have never heard him refer to the report by Simon Communities of Ireland, which knows exactly what the situation is on the ground - it is hopeless. I use that word with great caution. It is the thirty-fifth snapshot study, which is taken over three days and looks at what properties are available everywhere. It looks at the situation in different categories, which I will not go into. What does it tell us? It states: "The report comes in the context of a private rental market characterised by unaffordability, volatility, and an overall lack of supply." Outside of Dublin, a bleak situation continues, and the report goes on to tell us why that is. If we take Galway city, there are no houses available under the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme either at the ordinary level, or whatever the term is, and the discretionary level.

I had somebody on the telephone, Iike all TDs do, who is currently living in a hotel with his six-month-old baby and partner. They are homeless, and they have been there for the past six months. There is absolutely no hope for that family to get a home or a house. They are being told to go on choice-based letting. Everybody on the waiting list in Galway is insulted by being told to go on choice-based letting. We have hundreds, if not thousands, looking at a house they are never going to get. That is what they are being told to do. The Simon report tells us that rents for all new tenancies are 16% higher. It goes on to tell us about eviction notices. In the first quarter and second quarter of this year, 8,845 households received notices. That is in addition to the 19,011 households that received eviction notices last year. The Minister of State might bear that in mind. Tenants are increasingly forced to pay top-up payments. The Minister of State might remember that people did it under the counter, but now Government policy is that they must pay an over-the-counter top-up. People pay the local authority rent and then a top-up, and the taxpayer pays the rest. The report states that "record levels of homelessness continue" with 14,486 men, women and children, and that includes 4,419 children.

I could go on, and I would like to because I am not here to trade insults. I am here to say this Government's and the previous Government's housing policy has utterly failed. The Government relied on the market. It made a home into a commodity to be traded and sold and did not recognise the value of a home for our health and a person's ability to participate in society. This trading of insults across to the main Opposition party from the Minister, etc., is absolutely depressing and unacceptable. It is an insult to the people who are living in Galway with absolutely no hope of a house.

I agree with my colleague that an integral part of the solution is public housing on public land. The prices of houses have to come down. It is insulting to say affordability is €500,000 or €400,000. It is an obscenity. I do not have enough strong words to describe what is happening here. The very fabric of society depends on the social cohesion of people having a home and a basic sense of security so they can let their children go to school and help them to have continuity. The Government has broken all of that. It has broken the social contract utterly and completely. A wise Government - I am waiting for that wisdom - would say this is wrong and that we need a reset like the Housing Commission asked for.

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