Building 14 houses this year, and plans to construct 250 between 2017 and 2020, will not solve, or even begin to address the housing crises in Galway city, where some 15,000 people are on the housing waiting list.
This is the view of Independent Galway West TD Catherine Connolly who was speaking following a protest outside City Hall on Monday - ahead of the city council meeting - by the new Galway Housing Action Group, which is also calling on the Government to treat the State’s accommodation crisis as a “national emergency”. The TD said she “fully supports” the group’s call.
On Monday the city council confirmed it will begin constructing the 14 houses, located in the Knocknacarra area, in the coming months, and a further 250 houses over the next five years. However Dep Connolly said this was inadequate to deal with a waiting list of 4,720 households, including some applicants on the two-bedroom list waiting for more than 15 years.
The city council also confirmed that two thirds of 18 hectares of residential zoned land would be unusable because of the proposed N6 ring road project which, Dep Connolly says ,may not be completed until 2024/2025.
Dep Connolly said the “policies of successive governments had created this housing crisis in Galway”, while the “freezing of so much residential zoned land is scandalously intensifying the crisis”. She added that no public housing had been constructed in Galway since 2009 and outside the provision of funds to voluntary housing bodies, Government policy “is and has been to rely completely on the private market”.
The TD said the “primary solution” to the crisis is the construction of public housing on residential zoned land, and an “urgent review of the decision” to freeze 12 hectares of residential land. “We must look at co-operative housing and shared ownership as part of an overall solution,” she said, “and look to local builders to take an active part in this construction programme.”
