Stamullen is a town of roughly 4,000 people, where local families are waiting years for housing. Yet, the State now owns residential properties there intended for asylum accommodation, including homes that have sat vacant despite acute local need. This is the situation that residents are grappling with. A well-attended public meeting last night confirmed that a house in the Forgehill estate has been in the ownership of the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration since 2022, when our own Minister, Deputy Helen McEntee, was the Minister for Justice, while families living in the same estate remain on housing lists with no prospect of allocation.

This is occurring in a community already under extreme pressure. Stamullen and its surrounding areas host a very high concentration of accommodation and care facilities, while local schools are full, healthcare access is stretched and Garda resources are minimal. Who in this Chamber knew that the Department of justice is now a housing agency focused on housing international protection applicants? Decisions of this scale are being made without meaningful consultation, transparent communication or any published assessment of local capacity. This contributes to, frankly, an insane national situation. The country is in the grip of an acute housing crisis, where working families and young families cannot access homes, while the State acquires or holds residential properties for other purposes, even leaving them vacant for years. This is a failure of governance, planning and prioritisation.

A recent report also showed that the State is ignoring basic data, such as nationality in housing, meaning it will not even bother to measure who benefits where pressures are the greatest and whether resources are being fully used efficiently. All considered, what we are looking at beggars belief: a system where first-time buyers and those on housing lists appear to be easily outflanked on one side by new arrivals entitled to the same benefits and on the other side by a State that is recklessly eating up available accommodation without any consultation. The Minister for justice, Deputy Jim O'Callaghan, or the Minister of State, Deputy Colm Brophy, must appear before this Chamber to explain what is happening. Twenty-nine of these houses have been bought throughout this country. This situation is nothing but madness and our community will not put up with it. Indeed, it is my community today, but it will be other Senators' communities tomorrow, so wake up.