Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming to Mayo and for meeting with the representatives of the group of people who are affected by pyrite. I would ask that he puts an urgent redress scheme in place for those householders. There is no way they can go through another winter, given the state their houses are in. I again thank the Minister of State for coming and I understand that he knows the urgency of this issue.

In Mayo, approximately 4,000 people are on the waiting list for housing schemes. I fundamentally disagree with Senator Boyhan on this, when he said that it does not matter where the houses come from. It really is the drive for privatisation which has left us in a situation where we are spending millions of euro on rental payments to private landlords when that money should be used for building houses. I am not saying that it all should be used to build houses, but the vast majority of it should.

Almost 4,000 people have housing needs in Mayo, and there is a proposed building programme which seeks to build 600 houses before 2021. The Minister of State knows that, with the best will in the world, it is not going to happen. Having worked in the local authority it concerns me that there is huge bureaucracy in the planning stages between the Department and the local authority. It is not a case of the local authority being tardy with all of this; the bureaucracy slows it all down. We have to find a way of speeding up the whole process. The Government will say that there is plenty of money available to build houses and yet we cannot get them built. There is a blockage there which needs to be addressed.

There is no doubt that we are in a housing crisis, and it really alarms me to hear Senator Buttimer say that it depends on perspective. I stay in hotels when I am in Dublin and see the children who are living in them. It makes me wonder what perspective they are going to have growing up, and what their perspective on the Governments and the society that let them down will be. It is not about perspective. It is about reality. Attempts are being made to normalise this. It can never be normal for a child to be homeless and to have to live in a hotel room. The real urgency of the crisis we are in must be realised and understood. Forget about the spin and the manufacturing of the numbers. We need housing. People deserve a home as a right. I acknowledge the good things that are being done, and the cross-party work that has been done. We are in a crisis from the perspective of people who need the housing, but also the stability of our whole country, including Dublin, is at risk because of the lack of housing.

I want to speak about the housing schemes, specifically the HAP scheme, the mobility aids grant and the housing adaptation grant, and to tell the Minister of State of the real problems that are there. While Government will say there is plenty of money for housing and homes, barriers are being put up. Barriers are in place in terms of age limits. One once had to be 60 to avail of housing aid for older people. There are also barriers regarding heating. It was said that grants were available through the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI. Those grants are not now available through SEAI, so many homes are really not habitable because they do not have basic heating. I ask the Minister of State to ask the local authorities to lift that ban on funding heating within homes, because there is no point in having a grant for windows or anything else if the basic heating system is not working. The Minister of State should act on that as a matter of urgency. It would be appreciated.

The Minister of State should also look at situations where an elderly person is living with somebody, a carer, for example, or someone who needs to live with the elderly person. That should not exclude them from getting an essential housing repair grant. It should not exclude them, and it is being used again as an excuse. The Minister of State should give a direction to the local authorities in this regard. It would really help the situation.

There are very many more issues. We seek at all times to be constructive in order to solve this housing crisis in any way we can.