Louis O'Hara (Galway East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion. As a young person in my mid-20s, I know all too well the impact of the housing crisis and Government inaction and the suffering it has caused for those who are homeless or in insecure housing situations. When I look the Government's record in my own constituency, it is little wonder we are in this situation. Not one affordable home has been delivered in Galway East. We are told that affordable housing is not viable or needed in most parts of county Galway at a time of record and unaffordable house prices. We need genuinely affordable housing. We are not building enough social housing. People are struggling to pay rents that are often outside the HAP limits, if they can get HAP at all. Now the Government wants to get rid of rent pressure zones in what, I suspect, is an attempt to squeeze even more out of hard-pressed renters. We do not have enough private housing developments either. The Government missed its housing targets last year and misled the public about how many houses would be built.

People in Galway who wish to build their own homes are finding it difficult to do so because of the planning process and development fees. Many of our towns and villages do not have adequate wastewater infrastructure for housing development including Corrofin, Abbeyknockmoy, Craughwell, Ardrahan and many more across the county. There has been minimal investment and no urgency to address this deficit in our infrastructure which is holding up the delivery of housing in my constituency. This must be treated as a priority by the Government. If one walks or drives through any town or village in county Galway, one will see multiple vacant homes, some of which have been idle for years. These are buildings that would make great homes for families stuck on the housing list or in rental accommodation but there has been no serious effort to bring them back into use. These problems have existed for years and are replicated in every part of this State. They have also been pointed out to the Government for years. The bottom line is that the Governments puts the profits of those for whom housing is an investment ahead of affordable housing for people who need it and is prepared to send my generation to every corner of the world to achieve this. We need a radical reset in housing policy, as called for by the Housing Commission, to give my generation a future in this country.

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