Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In their delivery, the witnesses were going through the amount of social houses that were being delivered.

For people to get into my county, infrastructure is needed. For businesses to survive in my county, infrastructure is needed. If you do a retrofit on your business, you cannot build unless we have people there. Tenants in situas well, if they are working, want to work. If there is no infrastructure, they are at a loss because it is costing more to live in the county to go to work.

From the point of tenancies and voids, Kilmallock is a 14th-century town where most of the buildings are listed. How do I get people into buildings? It is costing more to get tenants into listed buildings. In the 1400s, 1500s, 1600s and 1700s, and all the way up to 50 years ago, there were people living in these buildings but now, conservation is standing in the way of me putting people back into them. Instead of encouraging people to move into listed buildings, you are being discouraged because of the cost involved.

I am a builder. I build every day. I was on-site this morning before I came here. There is probably a bit of concrete on my shoes, but the committee will have to excuse that. I understand it because I live it. I understand what is getting in the way of putting people into buildings because I live it on a daily basis. The biggest problem for me to have tenancies in my area is that, even though the listed buildings are included in the systems that are there, the systems are broken and they do not want to put people into these buildings because of the problems they will cause when they move in. Even though they are included in the statistics for the sewerage systems, they cannot put people in because the systems that are there are broken. For me to have tenants in situthere and to keep them there, and for me to get more tenants into the areas where I live, is a problem and everything is around infrastructure, planning and enforcement. How can the committee or the witnesses help that?