Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)

I want to speak in favour of this motion although I have concerns about parts of it. Overall, I agree with it and the focus it puts on the absence of infrastructure. I will not support the narrative on this side of the House to the effect that objections are causing the planning problems. That is a false, self-serving narrative. My office has just submitted a question to confirm the number of vacancies in the planning system. At any given time, I am told there are 500. I tried my best to elicit a response from the Department of housing lately but failed. However, it confirmed the number was around 500. We should not scapegoat objectors. I do not know any objectors; I know concerned residents and citizens who break their hearts to put in submissions because they are concerned.

In Galway, I have fought for student accommodation repeatedly; however, it is completely developer led and popping up where developers decide it will make the best profit, leaving residents in various areas throughout the city in a most difficult position. Therefore, I will not support the self-serving narrative.

If we used the number of words we use here in the Dáil, I am sure we could build quite an amount of housing. To stop all the talk, the Government commissioned a Housing Commission report. It reported last May, over a year ago, and had 83 recommendations. What jumped out for me was the statement that there has been systemic failure and that we need a radical reset and to change our policy completely. What the Government did was run with one aspect of that, in relation to rent pressure zones. The commission specifically stated the Government should not run with one recommendation and that all must be taken on board for a radical reset, a completely different vision.

There is one little hope for Galway. We are now learning that in the midst of an absolutely dreadful housing crisis there, 75% of the houses are being built directly. That 75% of projected delivery is through own builds is very positive. I agree with that. It is the one little piece of hope from the forum, which has been sitting for way too long without publishing a comprehensive report on the housing crisis in Galway.

It has been mentioned already that the Ombudsman for Children, Dr. Niall Muldoon, has highlighted the catastrophic consequences of homelessness for children. Teachers in Dublin, some in my own family, state children are coming from different homelessness units to school and are expected to compete with, and be on the same level as, other children. All that is increasing is the number of homelessness organisations. We have gone from the Peter McVerry Trust to other organisations, each filling a void that the Government should be filling to prevent homelessness.

On the matter of the Peter McVerry Trust, which is before the Committee of Public Accounts, that entity should never have been allowed to develop in the manner it did, with a lack of oversight. I am not casting any aspersions on the tremendous work done, but it should have been left for those who need a wraparound service and who are homeless for many reasons. Instead, the trust went off in all sorts of different directions without any monitoring. It bought a hotel, which has been empty since 2022. There are many other problems besides.

Let us consider what the Housing Commission stated. It stated we should assess housing need in Ireland on the basis of what is needed for a well-functioning society. That is the kernel for me. It has been continuously ignored by every Government, which puts an emphasis on the view that the market will provide, as if a home were not the most essential thing one could have for security of tenure and to allow people to raise families and participate in society. Every single week people are worrying about security of tenure and where they are going to end up. Having to move because of a lack of security means changes of school and of all one’s conditions.

Imagine that we needed a housing commission to tell us how essential a home is and to put the emphasis on a well-functioning society and the number of houses we need for that. The Housing Commission specifically asked us not to conflate this with market demand or construction capacity, and to consider housing in a completely different way. It also stated social housing and cost-rental housing should comprise at least 20% of the overall target set by the Government. Of course, that is not happening at all. The chair was in the city council, as was I. I was on the council for 17 years. Unfortunately, I watched the local authority being starved of funds and functions and forced into undesirable circumstances. After the crash, the Government, with all its accounting tricks and off-balance-sheet accounting, introduced the housing assistance payment. This has been an absolute disaster, costing over half a billion euro per year, or nearly a billion euro with the cost of the other schemes. The Housing Commission is saying we should put it back to what it should be, involving a short term arrangement, and build local authority housing. However, we cannot do that because of the blame game, with the local authority saying it does not have enough money and the Department saying it has loads of money. Despite what is said, we have a crisis.

To me, part of the solution – perhaps I am too simple to see the solution but I have a lot of experience based on what I have watched – is to have nothing but public housing on public land. There should not be premium housing or any other type on public land. This is what the task force in Galway, which has now sat since 2019, should be ensuring.

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