(Seo alt ónár bhfoireann Gaeltachta. Is féidir an bunleagan as Gaeilge a léamh anseo)

MORE than 570 houses are available on the holiday accommodation platform Air BnB in Connemara today and only 10 houses are available on the Daft.ie platform for people looking to rent, the Social Democrat housing spokesman, Rory Hearne, revealed during a Dáil debate questioning Minister Dara Calleary’s approach to the housing crisis in the Gaeltacht.

The TD was asking the Minister for Rural and Community Development, and the Gaeltacht, to outline what his Department was doing to tackle the housing shortage that was forcing young people from the Gaeltacht to leave those areas to raise their families.

“The housing crisis in the Gaeltacht is having a particularly detrimental impact on these communities and on our language,” the TD said.

This morning there were ten properties available for rent on daft.ie and how many on Air BnB, 573 – and it was also reported this morning on the website onemillionhomes that more than 12,000 homes were needed in Gaeltacht areas.

He said that the Minister had powers under Section 9 of the Housing (Gaeltacht) Act 2001 in relation to housing matters and asked the Minister to outline what he had done in relation to the housing crisis in the Gaeltacht, using those powers to provide houses and ensure the future of the Gaeltacht.

The Minister prefaced his responses to two separate questions on same topic by stating that the responsibility for housing lay with the Department of Housing rather than the Department of the Gaeltacht and also referred to the lack of housing in the Gaeltacht as a ‘challenge’. He also referred to the role of Údarás na Gaeltachta, the agency charged with economic development in these areas,  in his response.

“Part of the aim of Údarás is to ensure that the Irish language survives as a community language in Gaeltacht areas and that it is preserved for future generations – to that end, Údarás provides funding to a wide range of employment and enterprise enterprises and the organisation supports it with strategic policies in relation to language, cultural and community development,” the Minister said.

It is worth noting that there will be a role for the Údarás, albeit a secondary one, in working with the relevant stakeholders in supporting the provision of housing in the Gaeltacht.

In his response, the Minister did not, however, refer to his own powers under Section 9 of the Housing Act in his response to the Social Democrat spokesperson. Under that legislation, the Minister is authorised to make a grant ‘towards the cost of constructing or improving a dwelling house in the Gaeltacht’. He is authorised to do this where he is satisfied that ‘the occupation of that dwelling house will not be detrimental to the use of the Irish language in that Gaeltacht area’.

The Minister explained, however, that progress had been made in that a vacant and derelict houses co-ordinator had recently been employed by Mayo County Council with the support of Údarás and that this person would be tackling the problem of derelict houses in all counties with Gaeltacht areas.

He also said that he would be meeting with the chief executive of Údarás na Gaeltachta this week and with the chief executives of local authorities with Gaeltacht areas during February to discuss the issues relating to the housing challenge.

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He indicated that he had held meetings with Housing Minister James Browne and aimed to publish a national planning statement for the Gaeltacht earlier than the 2027 deadline set when the Housing Plan was published in November last year. Planning guidelines for the Gaeltacht had been expected from 2022 and it disappointed many that this had been put on hold again.

Responding to another question on housing matters f the Minister said this to his party colleague, Galway West TD John Connolly.

“There is a lot of work being done on this and it is going to take time but we are doing the work – I would prefer it to be making changes more quickly but we are doing the work and taking the steps that we need to take.”

The Journal’s Gaeltacht initiative is supported by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme

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