WLR General Election Debate: Candidates outline views on housing and immigration

The first of the WLR 2024 General Election Debates took place at the Old Bank, Dungarvan on Monday, November 18th.

Seven candidates vying for a seat in the Waterford constituency took part in a two-hour debate chaired by WLR's Damien Tiernan - which was then broadcast on Deise Today on Tuesday, November 19th.

The seven candidates present were - Mary Butler TD (Fianna Fail); Matt Shanahan TD (Independent); Cllr. Conor McGuinness (Sinn Fein); Sadhbh O'Neill (Labour); Ronan Cleary (Aontu); Killian Mangan (Independent) and Aaron Joyce (Independent).

Among the various issues debated on the night were the topics of housing and immigration - and all candidates were given an opportunity to outline their views on the matter.

Sinn Fein Councillor Conor McGuinness says there's one way in particular that the housing crisis should be combatted - by building houses.

"Building houses is the short answer, and that might sound glib and that might sound smart, but that is what we need to do. There hasn't been a single affordable house delivered. There isn't one under construction in the county, and we need to see affordable houses built and delivered. The housing crisis is impacting people who are looking to buy a home, people who are renting a home, and people in many cases who are hidden homeless, who are living in overcrowded accommodation or raising their families in their childhood bedroom, and we see it all the time going to the door. The real issue here is a lack of delivery, and that's what needs to be ramped up."

Aontu candidate Ronan Cleary says the market must be protected and 'illegal immigration' must be controlled.

"We need to prevent vulture funds buying off the plans. That's the one thing that we need to do because there's estates growing up in Dublin that are already bought from these vulture funds. I believe we need to get a control on illegal immigration, that's soaking up much of the market. We also need to ensure that people can downsize effectively. We also need to relax the planning laws a bit."

Labour candidate Sadhbh O'Neill outlined her party's stance on the housing crisis.

"We will transform housing, and we have a comprehensive plan to build more homes, 50,000 at least per year, but also 50,000 retrofits. We have to recognise that 8% of the housing stock, according to the CSO, is vacant, and some of that is perfectly fine to go back into use, but the owners of the property either need the right incentives or they need to be incentivised to get those properties back into use. In terms of the overall state of the housing market, the State's policy has been, on the one hand, to add just a trickling amount of new housing onto the market, which has elevated property prices, and it has been kind of recycling the rest of the market between first-time buyers, long leases, and local authority interventions, and this is simply not adding enough supply, and it's not adding enough affordable housing."

Independent candidate Aaron Joyce took the opportunity to address issues of housing and immigration - stating that government policy failures are not the fault of those seeking asylum.

"At 33 years of age in Ireland today - my own personal hope of ever probably owning a house, getting a mortgage at my age, at this moment in life, is probably not going to happen. I don't blame any immigrant for any action of the government here in Ireland. I have every sympathy and empathy for anybody whose life is threatened in the Ukraine, Palestine, or any other war-torn country. But are we going to become that banana boat or that boat that gets toppled over or can just keep taking people? We are debating whether immigration is crossing over into our housing sector as an issue."

Killian Mangan (Independent) stated his belief that 'an entire generation has been failed'.

"This is pretty much the main reason that I decided to run. We have a housing crisis which has basically failed my entire generation. I'm part of a generation which has been locked out of basically ever having a home, effectively. A lot of my friends have emigrated to find a better quality of life. The ones who stayed, like me, I'm telling people I'm following the Irish dream and living with my parents in my late 20s. A lot of my friends are also struggling to pay their rent despite having good jobs. I'm very concerned that this is a crisis very clearly caused by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil and their decision to financialise housing."

Independent TD Matt Shanahan says housing has been declared 'an emergency' - yet isn't being treated as one.

"This is an emergency and it should be declared an emergency. We're not coming at it in the way we should. The first thing we need to do - the government says we built 40,000 houses last year and we'll build 50,000 potentially next year. Government doesn't build anything. They create the environment for which building can happen. That's done largely through either private or public bodies. In the main, it's private. When you look at where the problems are, zoned lands, we don't have enough of them. We de-zoned lands in previous development plans and now we're being told we have to rezone them again. Irish Water, speak to any developer and they will tell you the problems. There's a major problem within the construction sector in terms of finance. It is only the largest builders are able to plan a scheme and to finish it out."

Fianna Fail TD Mary Butler says the Government are treating housing as an emergency but accepts 'much more needs to be done'.

"I'm not saying for a minute that housing isn't a huge challenge. 2,468 new homes have been completed in Waterford since July 2020. From January to September of this year, 716 homes have been commenced in Waterford. Of those 2,500 houses, 1,357 social homes were delivered in Waterford, 664 through new builds, 187 through acquisition, and 506 through leasing. Fianna Fáil took on the portfolio. They asked specifically for it four and a half years ago. 125,000 houses have been built. That's 125,000 homes. I know we have to do much more."