The housing crisis is a national emergency brought on by a decade and a half of Government failure and the only way to fix it is to get new leadership, says Sheila Garrity, an independent candidate in this month’s Galway West by-election.
“We have the solutions,” she said. “What has been missing is urgency and political courage. Families in Galway cannot wait any longer for the Government to catch up.”
The State recognises that nearly 17,000 people in Ireland have no home — among them over 5,000 children, although it is widely accepted there are many more homeless who are not listed on official lists; thousands more live in precarious housing. In addition, the country has a generation of young people who are locked out of finding a home to purchase. New figures emerging from https://onemillionhomes.ie/ comparing housing demand to building rates are appalling.
“Across Galway West, on average, it will take fifty years for those in the 18-44-year-old age bracket to be accommodated with a home,” Garrity said. “Fifty years. That is a shocking indictment of the Government.”
She has seen firsthand the results of the housing crisis. “It is now the norm on the doorstep to meet two-generation families with adult children still living at home, and I am meeting more three-generation families. I am hearing that working adults are unable to purchase homes, even on good salaries. Limited availability results in bidding wars and elevated prices. I am also meeting renters who live month to month with the fear of the eviction notice. It shouldn’t be like this. Government policy has created this dysfunction.”
In the West, the lack of housing is posing an existential threat to the Irish language, she said. While Airbnb have hundreds of homes as short-term lets to rent across Connemara, https://www.daft.ie/ have none for long-term renting in the region. The impact is that young families have no homes to settle in and raise their children through Irish.
“The intergenerational transmission of the Irish language, which is critical to the passing on of culture, is being broken,” she said. “Once lost, this can never be recaptured. The Irish Language Strategy talks about protecting Gaeltacht regions to preserve the language, yet Government policies effectively undermine that goal. I will champion Gaeltacht communities and push for more social housing across Galway West.”
Urgent action is needed. If elected, Garrity said, she would fight to extend the Short-Term Letting and Tourism Bill to areas where housing is scarce and to exclude full family homes. “This bill is still held up in the Oireachtas – there is clearly no political will to make even this limited legislation a reality,” she said.
Garrity would also push for bringing empty buildings back to life, stopping homelessness before it starts by reinstating the ban on no-fault evictions, expanding apprenticeships to create the tradespeople we need, and ramping up building at the scale the crisis demands.
“In order to tackle this ongoing crisis, we must progress several strategies at once – new ideas, from new leaders.”
