Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this motion. I cannot tell you how many times I have spoken on this issue. I will come to the housing task force, the minutes of which the Minister was instrumental in getting us. When we talk about empty houses tonight, we are doing so against a background of the highest ever number of homeless people: 15,580, 4,475 of whom are children. This Government is taking pride in its policy, a jigsaw of pieces that adds more confusion, keeps house prices artificially high, and continues to treat housing as a commodity rather than a fundamental, basic unit of society - a home. You clap yourselves on the back with no overall picture. Sinn Féin has tabled a motion that is very practical. Honestly, if the Government had any sense, it would agree with it, even just for appearances' sake. It asks for the turnaround time for an empty house to be 12 weeks with some flexibility, for direct labour and for a report in real time every six months. I have no problem supporting it. I cannot understand how the Government has a problem with it.

Let us go back to this famous task force in Galway. It was announced in 2018 and set up in 2019. It is now six years later and the task force is still sitting. All that has changed is that there is a different chair. It was set up because there was a housing emergency in Galway directly related to the Government's policy because it failed to build houses. Deputy Hearne is perfectly right. I put it differently although I agree with him. There is an absolute prejudice inbuilt into this Government and every government in relation to public housing, which should be an essential part of the solution. When it abandoned that, it created an emergency that is getting worse and worse. The Housing Commission has asked for a radical reset of housing policy, but it has been utterly ignored by the Government except for the piecemeal tinkering with rent limits. The Housing Commission says that we need at a minimum 20% public housing, but this has been utterly ignored. I have looked at the most recently available minutes of the task force. The new chair, if I am not wrong, is a former general secretary or economist. He has expressed his utter frustration at what is going on in Galway city and county. I will quote him precisely. This is what he is telling us, six years after the task force was set up. The minutes state:

For the next meeting, the chair requested a short document providing a story of the maps to include the following: what is going on in the housing market in Galway both public and private?

I imagine that was the most basic question. It was the first question that should have been asked back in 2019. A report on that should have been produced. Here we are in 2025, and there are waiting lists on which some people are waiting, without exaggeration, up to 20 years. Most are waiting somewhere between eight and 15 years for a public house.

He tells the two managers what is needed, what is going on in the market, the use of local authority land for housing purposes, what lands are not being used, the location of the land acquisitions, what the main areas for private development are, where significant development is taking place, how many units are dependent on critical infrastructure, and so on. He also talks about funding and resources. This is 2025, and an emergency housing task force is finally beginning to ask questions when the crisis has become absolutely out of all proportion.

We can look at what has happened. We see the county and we see An Cheathrú Rua i gcroílár na Gaeltachta gan aon chóras séarachais. Níl aon chóras séarachais. Tá séarachais amh ag dul isteach san fharraige. Is constaic ollmhór í sin do chúrsaí tithíochta. Tá sé ráite go neamhbhalbh ag an gcomhairle contae nach féidir leo tuilleadh tithe a thógáil de bharr easpa infreastruchtúir. Níl seans dá laghad go mbeidh forbairt chothrom i gceist ó thaobh an chontae agus ó thaobh na cathrach. Tuigeann an tAire Stáit é sin. It is impossible to have balanced regional development and balanced city and county development if we do not have basic infrastructure. If we take one major example in Carraroe, there is no sewage treatment plant so no houses can be built. When we go to updates twice a year, finding out what the problems are is like pulling teeth without anaesthetic. We find absence of infrastructure is a problem.

Galway city is destined to grow as one of the five cities. I ask the Minister of State to come and look at what is happening in Galway, because there is not even a site for a treatment facility for east Galway. The plan is for Ardaun to have a population of 10,000. There is not a sign of a treatment plan for that. Then we have two pipes under the Corrib Estuary, down where I live in the Claddagh. A report was done on behalf of Uisce Éireann to say one of those pipes is in imminent danger of collapse. There is another more technical name for it. This is one of the major pipes carrying the sewage from east Galway out to the Mutton Island treatment plant and it is in imminent danger of collapse. The former Minister of State, Senator Noonan of the Green Party, was there and he took this seriously enough but it went nowhere. We were told it was a misunderstanding and the engineer had not said that and the engineer’s report had not said that, so I went back and looked and of course that is the position in Galway.

I am a proud Galwegian. I want it to grow sustainably. I want to see development but I want to see balanced regional development. I want to see a masterplan for the public lands because there has never been one. The harbour, which is public land held in trust for the people of Galway, is going ahead with its own plan for premium housing on public land to keep the price artificially high. Ceannt Station, with something like 14 ha in the city, has its own plan. There is no masterplan. When I was there I was told the council could not afford to produce a masterplan, so it would let the developers do that. Thus we have developer-led development. I say this openly at the risk of losing votes. We have developer-led development in Galway. We have absolutely no vision and no understanding of the challenges we face due to climate change and flooding.

We need transformative action for Galway. We need to take it as a pilot city, a city of the future with an integrated public transport system including light rail and at least 20% to 30% public housing so we can bring the price of houses down and treat housing as what it should be, namely, the most basic requirement if we are going to call ourselves a republic and a democracy. The Minister of State is nodding and he is a decent man whose heart is in the right place, but unfortunately government after government has made the situation worse. It is a neoliberal ideology that is completely out of control and is treating housing as something to be bought and sold with a huge profit as opposed to a basic requirement to allow people take part in society and not be looking at insecurity of tenure.

With this motion we are focusing on one aspect. At any given time in Galway the number of vacant houses is between 80 and 120. Some of them have been vacant for ten years and some for five years. Two beside my estate have been vacant for three and five years.

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