'Not putting people first,' Tipperary TD appalled by housing system in Ireland

Independent Tipperary South TD Mattie McGrath has slammed the Government’s ongoing failure to address the housing crisis, describing the current system as “organised mayhem” and demanding an urgent overhaul of the bureaucracy surrounding public housing delivery.

Speaking during a Dáil debate on housing, Deputy McGrath said: “Every clinic, every week, is swamped with housing cases. There is so little output and so much red tape. HAP has become a black hole where billions are wasted — money that should have gone directly into building public homes.”

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He accused the Custom House, home of the Department of Housing, of being at the heart of the dysfunction: “There’s deep rot in that building and a number of sections within the Department need to be dismantled. The mandarins are sitting in their fiefdoms, moving paper around, keeping people in jobs, but delivering nothing on the ground.”

Deputy McGrath called for a return to common sense in public housing, based on his own experience as chair of the Caisleán Nua Voluntary Housing Association, which successfully delivered homes in rural Tipperary: “We built 17 houses with pride and community spirit. Today, you’d need a design team, six departments, and a miracle. Local voluntary associations like ours are being squeezed out by giant housing conglomerates. It’s a racket.”

“We’ve had more housing Ministers than hot dinners, and each one makes the same mistakes. As Einstein said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

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He also condemned the dismantling of local housing capacity, particularly in towns like Clonmel, where once-strong local authority teams have been gutted: “We had builders and maintenance crews that kept homes in good order. Now we’re down to one staff member for the whole borough. That’s not putting people first — that’s putting them last.”

Deputy McGrath called for real decentralisation of housing powers to local authorities, support for small, community-led housing groups, and a full review of dysfunctional planning and water infrastructure delays caused by Irish Water and An Bord Pleanála.