Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas le Seanadóir Norris as a chomhairle. I am sure we will bring it to the next Ard Comhairle meeting for discussion.

Often, when we raise housing issues, the Leader lambastes us with figures of allocations from Rebuilding Ireland and all the moneys being made available for housing. No doubt he will probably come back today once I have finished my piece. For me, the facts and figures on housing are how many houses have actually been built and how many people are in them.

Reports yesterday show that since the start of 2016, local authorities have built just 430 properties, and new analysis shows that local authorities are using just a fraction of the land they own to build social housing. It is estimated that local authorities throughout the country own more than 1,200 ha of land with the potential for almost 38,000 homes. I am particularly perturbed that at the bottom of the league once again are Galway City Council and Galway County Council, which built zero houses in the city and county in that time, even though we have massive waiting lists and it is a big issue. Our neighbours in Mayo are a little bit better as they built one house in that time.

It defies logic that we have local authorities sitting on banks of serviced land with the potential to build houses. The Leader tells us buckets of money are available but the local authorities are just not building houses. We have people ringing our offices every day of the week distraught because they have no homes to live in and they are being put into homelessness.All the talk needs to stop and we need to see much more action. There is no point in Ministers shaking their heads. The Government is in charge here and needs to ensure these things happen.

I congratulate Galway Traveller Movement on organising an excellent presentation on Monday. It has started a new campaign on Traveller community accommodation, which is an absolute disgrace across the country. We had huge fanfare on 1 March when the then Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, recognised Traveller ethnicity and all the wonderful words around that. However, Monday's conference, which was attended by Peter McVerry, heard harrowing stories of the appalling conditions of Travellers in substandard illegal halting sites because of a lack of accommodation from local authorities, etc. I call for a debate on Traveller accommodation. I note only one politician bothered to attend that campaign launch and there are no prizes for guessing who that was.