Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)

Tuigim. Leanfaidh mé ar aghaidh until they come. Go raibh míle maith agat. Unfortunately, the Deputy who made the allegation of sanctimonious wrath against a colleague in another party has left. I cannot think of anything more inappropriate from a TD who is part of the Government that is standing over a housing crisis. The only sanctimonious wrath that I have ever heard in this Chamber has been from successive Governments. They have used it as a tool and a weapon to obfuscate, avoid and confuse as a way of not analysing the problem. Sanctimonious wrath is an interesting phrase when we look at the fact that almost 16,000 people are homeless. I use these figures. I have been in the Dáil since 2016.

The Minister of State knows that very well. He is familiar with Galway from me harassing him - I take that word back - from constantly asking him about the task force in Galway that should not be there because it is not functioning.

We have no choice but to support the legislation to extend the RPZs to the entire country. The Bill has been introduced in a chaotic and disorderly fashion, with no pre-legislative scrutiny. The committee had to agree with that given the urgency of the Bill. No scheme is ever analysed or studied in the context of what has happened. We keep adding pieces of the jigsaw but we are getting no picture, except to hear that the market will provide.

I wondered what I could say today. I have said it over and over again. The phrase "sanctimonious rot" inspired me to stand up and say: "Good Lord, this is what we are dealing with." There are almost 16,000 people homeless. We have normalised homelessness and we lack security of tenure. We have turned language on its head, just like we have with international relations with Gaza and Israel.

We are creating a very serious problem in Ireland where, more and more, there is a lack of faith in anything the Government says. I do not wish that on any government because it is very dangerous. Words must mean something. Policies must mean something. We deal with that when we talk about disinformation. Most of the disinformation I am concerned about arises from the Government, whether it is national or international politics.

Specifically on housing, when I left the local authority in Galway in 2016 the city was in the middle of a housing crisis. I became a TD, which gave me a privileged role. In 2018 and 2019, we talked about a task force because of the emergency in Galway. That task force has sat for year after year with no report being given or any analysis of the problem and what led to the housing crisis in Galway city and county. The task force is on its second chair. I do not wish to personalise it, but both chairs have serious experience. The Department and the councils are represented on it. By December of last year, it finally asked the question. I said this the other night. I hate repeating, but I am going to repeat that the new chair is finally asking the question. The task force was set up in 2019. In December 2024, the date of the latest minutes available to me – I am out of date with my minutes, such is the up-to-dateness of the task force - it told us that the delivery figures are going in the wrong direction. It told us we need to look at how we are going to overhaul housing delivery and get it massively ramped up. The task force has begun to ask what are the obstacles and seven years after it was set up, it has set out what those obstacles are. One of the major obstacles is that we did not build any houses. We stopped building in 2009.

We did not build any infrastructure. I do not know if it was the chair or one of the members of the new infrastructure task force who talked about objectors being a problem in an interview with Claire Byrne. I was singularly unimpressed. I repeat that infrastructure was not built, meaning we have no second treatment plant on the east side of Galway city. We have none in Carraroe. We cannot have balanced development. We had a debacle over Uisce Éireann. We were forced into condemning it. It was a case of divide and conquer, rather than resourcing the local authorities, which had all the knowledge. We have not resourced them to provide housing either.

Tomorrow, the Committee of Public Accounts will talk to the Department of housing. My colleagues and I have attempted to look at the documentation we have got. My God, I do not know how many schemes are now in place for housing. We have a housing crisis. We have children living in homeless accommodation. A delegation from Simon has gone to meet the Minister today about the mental health problems and other health problems arising from homelessness.

We are dealing with the consequences of the decisions of successive governments to treat housing as a product to be bought and sold, to back up the market, to change housing policy with the stroke of a pen in 2014. A pilot project was run on the housing assistance payment. It was said that people were adequately housed once they got a HAP payment. I was called a liar. I said I was very close to being a lawyer, but not quite, at the time. I was called a liar when I said that people were taken off the list once they received HAP. I was subsequently proven to be correct. Problem after problem was created.

My staff, like the staff of other TDs, are finding it very difficult to deal with the level of housing problems that are coming in. There are people who have been up to 16 years on a waiting list in Galway who have been made homeless. People are living in cars and coming in to us begging. We are told the homeless services are chock-a-block. The Simon Community produces a report every quarter. It tells us that there are no properties available under the HAP scheme, even the discretionary scheme. The task force is going nowhere and around in circles.

I am at the point of despair with the problems created by Government policy. One essential part of the solution is public housing on public land. We have not done it in Galway since 2009. The Land Development Agency is going to get more power to use public land to build premium housing down in the docks.

I do not wish to go on for the sake of it. I did not wish to speak at all today because I have spoken so often, sometimes for a minute and at other times for 15 minutes, on a housing crisis that is a deliberate consequence of Government policy of relying on the market. We have made housing into a product.

I have two sons in Dublin who are renting. I know exactly how it is from my office in Galway. The situation is chaotic. When a government gets to the point where it has normalised homelessness, we are in serious trouble as a republic.

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