Approximately 15,000 people in Galway have been waiting for a house since 2001 – in a crisis that has been deliberately created, Independent Deputy Catherine Connolly claimed in the Dáil.
She also revealed that rent in Galway city is 213% more than rent supplement or HAP; she claimed that crisis after crisis has come from an ideology that said the market will provide – but that it had signally failed to do that.
“If the Minister (Eoghan Murphy) is telling me that he is leaving ideology at the door, I welcome it. If he is telling me that he has suddenly realised a fundamental solution to this problem is the direct construction of social housing, I will be the first to praise him and champion that,” she said.
Eighty-one countries have enshrined the protection of housing or a home in their constitutions but not Ireland, said Deputy Connolly.
“Included in that number are Belgium, Finland, Greece, The Netherlands and Portugal,” she said.
“Other countries that have protected it in legislation include Austria, France, Germany and Luxembourg. Significantly, none of these countries has a housing crisis. The Minister might look at that,” she added.
The Simon Community provides a snapshot of the result of this crisis, she said. In August of this year, over three days it examined eleven areas in the country only to find that 91% of rental properties were unavailable to those in receipt of rent supplement or the housing assistance payment, HAP, which is “the only show in town” certainly in Galway City.
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