‘The housing crisis should never be normalised’ - Galway Simon annual report links mental health with home instability
The housing crisis is fuelling a growing mental health emergency, as new figures from Galway Simon Community reveal the scale of housing insecurity families are facing across the west.
Galway Simon Community launched its 2025 annual report at the Dean Hotel in Galway city last week, with the keynote speaker highlighting the link between housing insecurity and mental wellbeing.
The report examined homelessness trends across Galway, Mayo and Roscommon and paints a stark picture of rising housing pressures. According to the charity, 249 volunteers supported almost 2,000 people in 2025 through housing services as rental prices in Galway city and county nearly doubled over the past four years.
“Many families are left exposed to this supply and demand,” Galway Simon CEO Dr Carol Baumann said, presenting data that showed double increases in rents that are pricing families out of the market.
Keynote speaker Prof Brendan Kelly, consultant psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry, said the housing crisis is one of the key drivers of Ireland’s mental health challenges and described it as a “failure of policy”.
The annual report showed increases in funding and services across the board.
“A stable home is the most important thing for maintaining mental well-being and mental health. When a person develops mental illness, it becomes incredibly difficult to treat that effectively if they don’t have a stable base.
“If I had one wish for mental health in Ireland and mental well-being, it would be that each person had a stable, supported home,” Mr Kelly told the Irish Independent.
“The housing crisis should never be normalised. This is not a normal state of affairs. Other developed countries do not have a crisis at this level or to this extent.”
“Organisations like Galway Simon Community do a fabulous job working with many of the consequences of the housing crisis, however we also need to look upstream and ask harder questions of our politicians and policy makers. There is nothing inevitable about the housing crisis.”
“If I had one wish for mental health in Ireland and mental well-being, it would be that each person had a stable, supported home,”
Prof Kelly said that while one of the first questions he asks politicians concerns the long-standing commitment to allocate 10pc of the health budget to mental health under Sláintecare, housing is quick to be his second.
“Why is it that they are letting a relatively wealthy democratic country continue to have a housing supply problem, when other countries have different solutions that we could equally implement?”
“For the housing crisis, and indeed for the health service, we do need to stand back and not compare today with yesterday. We need to compare today with how things could be in a relatively wealthy democracy with a free press, an elected government, and remarkable political stability.”
Pictured at the launch are Prof. Brendan Kelly, TCD; Mayor of Galway City Cllr. Helen Ogbu and Dr Carol Baumann, CEO Galway Simon Community. © Boyd Challenger
“We should be able to build a better, fairer, more inclusive society in terms of housing, in terms of health, in terms of mental health,” he added.
Across Galway, Mayo and Roscommon, Galway Simon Community helped 568 families secure a home during 2025. However, that figure remains modest when set against the 9,186 households still waiting for social housing across the three counties.
Mayo and Roscommon County Councils delivered more than 220 social homes between them during the year.
Galway City Council and Galway County Council delivered a combined 342 social homes in 2025. Galway City councillor Eibhlín Seoighthe said “it’s not enough” to combat the demand as local authority figures fall short of Galway Simon’s.
“Any small mitigations that we can make will actually help get people off the waitlist for this. It’s so sad to think of the number of children that are potentially facing homelessness,” she said.
Cllr Seoighthe said that those measures can be achieved by greater discussion around rent controls and the impact of short-term lets on housing supply.
“You have to commend the work that the Simon community are doing out there filling in the gaps where it’s needed for government to fail time and time again.”
“Is it the local authority or is its national government not enabling the local authorities to be able to do something about this? Why aren’t the national government enabling local authorities to be able to build themselves and to be able to build social housing like they used to?”
With just one of four projects under the remit of the Land Development Agency currently in construction in Galway, Cllr Seoighthe questioned why greater urgency has not been brought to delivering affordable housing through the State agency.
Despite the scale of the challenge, speakers at the launch struck an optimistic tone about the future.
Year on year, Galway Simon Community has continued to increase its income and expand the support it provides to tackle homelessness across the west. As local authorities and housing charities work alongside one another, Prof Kelly said there are reasons to remain hopeful.
“I feel generally positive about the coming years because many indices are improving in certain areas, so there’s a lot of reason for positivity,” he said.
“Galway Simon Community are very good at channelling that sense of optimism, that volunteerism and that commitment to social justice.”
The full 2025 Annual Impact report can be found on the Galway Simon Community website.