Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am interested in what was said by Deputy Pat Casey about rapid build and modular housing. Mr. McCarthy gave the impression that these units were of high standard. I am sure we have all been approached - I have - by people who provide these modular homes and they look perfectly good to me. I do not know why there has been such a huge delay. This irritates me, given that we are all talking about the crisis, yet, when we there is a rapid build solution, it does not happen. There is something wrong in the system, given that it delivered houses for decades. There seems to be a huge inability to get started or have anything delivered. Many of us were very critical about this during the debate on the evictions Bill last night. We have had various announcements of funding by several Ministers in this and the last two Governments, yet the local authorities state they have no money. I am delighted that Mr. McCarthy said the process had been reduced from eight or nine stages to four, but four is still too many. I acknowledge that he said it was down to one or two stages for smaller projects, but there are still too many stages. He also said the Department wanted to consider having a common internal layout. We have screaming for this for years. Every time my council in County Tipperary wanted to build four houses in any village, it had to tender for architects to engage in design and procurement. Surely we can have designs for one-bedroom, two-bedroom, three-bedroom, four-bedroom and even five-bedroom units and then adapt them. Of course, there will be site and infrastructural issues, but, other than this, there should be a standard design.

There is a whole industry developing around architects and design for which there is no need and which must be cut out. It is jobs for the boys in the industry, as far as I am concerned. It is slowing down the entire process. These are standard houses. Once they are up to standard, they should be supported.

We ask about the voluntary sector. Mr. Walsh said 21 out of 31 authorities have applied for this special fund. I ask that members - me in any event - be provided with a list of them so that we know which ones did not apply. I would also like to see similar figures for the voluntary sector. I was very involved in the voluntary sector and I still am to a certain extent. We were able to build a 14-bed scheme in a small rural community in 1996. We had people in the houses within three years of our first meeting. We were a group of laypersons. There was not one professional in the group. We had to hire in professional expertise and we did so. At the time to which I refer, the county council was building a scheme for the elderly in the same field. It ended up having 17 steps and parts to it. We did not have one step in our project. The county council's scheme took six years to build, with four different builders - all supervised by the council - involved. The thing is rotten. It is not working. The Secretary General must sit up and take note. I am glad to see he is present. It is just not happening. The county council tells us that it does not have the staff, which is true, but those involved will have to do a bit more as well, to be fair. There is lethargy and ineptitude. It is not acceptable to have to wait for so long in a crisis.

Mr. McCarthy mentioned the commercial hotels and said the Department wants to see their use as emergency accommodation stopped and 700 families removed from them. On the day on which the announcement in this regard was made in the Dáil, I was contacted by a developer in Dublin who told me the Department had bought a hotel that was for sale for that very reason. One arm does not seem to know what the other is doing. It appears to be absolute bedlam and chaos. It is not functioning - full stop. I am sorry to be so critical but that is my position. I agree 100% with what Senator Murnane O'Connor said about families being removed from housing lists. I know families that spent seven or eight years on housing waiting lists and then, because they went over the limit by a little, they were removed. This was despite all the effort they make to be included on the main list and on the four-month waiting list and all the trauma they underwent. More than 3,000 people are approved in Tipperary, a rural county.

Then there are individuals who want to build houses and have a few bob and couples who want to settle down and have their money and site secured. They cannot get planning permission because local authorities are too rigid. It is a real dog-in-the-manger job. The county council, supervised by the Department, will not let them build and the Department will not build. We will have to cut out all these stages. The voluntary sector, at the time I was talking about, had one unit in the Department with which it could deal. Before that, there were three or four. Then it was cut down to one. Do the witnesses know exactly how many different sections of the Department the voluntary groups have to deal with? It is frustrating. There are voluntary groups that have the capacity, enthusiasm and energy to build and they will and can do it. They get local buy-in from people and get sites at better prices than local authorities. The latter see every problem as the glass being half empty, whereas the glass is well over half full for private individuals who can do it because they are left to do it.

There is an awful lot of unshackling to be done. There are too many jobs, too many conferences and too much HSE jargon. I heard one of the witnesses talk about some kind of special group the Department set up to talk to local authorities. I made a note of it. It is definitely HSE jargon, and this contagion has spread throughout all the Departments. It is a matter of pushing paper backward and forward and sweet Fanny Adams happening. That is my honest position. I am involved in construction and I know a bit about this matter. I know that modular units can be built on site and that this can be done by private people, but we cannot do it. We have all the strategies in the world but they are little good to people.

Then there are the evictions - the banks and the competitive aspect on the other side - whereby people are being dispossessed. We saw yesterday that hundreds of farmers will face repossession because of another vulture fund. More people are facing the housing crisis. We were playing catch-up in any event but we will now be at a standstill or near standstill. I could count on my fingers the number of houses built in Tipperary in the past three or four years. I asked the Minister before Christmas, during the debate about rent control, to call in the county managers, make them accountable and say, "Come on lads, for God's sake. We're at this for a number of years. What the hell is going on?" They are not held accountable. It is not happening. I am not being personally critical of any of the witnesses, but the system has become badly contaminated and is not working. There is no efficiency. As I said, voluntary groups are being starved.

The tenant purchase scheme was a disaster. I think three were approved in my county in the last scheme. That is not happening either. How come every scheme that is introduced just does not happen? Then there is NAMA, which recently told us it offered 1,600 units to councils. I went about checking this out and I am confused at this stage. We had letters back from NAMA, from my local authority - which was in a panic - and from the Housing Agency. It is just a paper trail that we are all justifying. Figures have been bandied about and people and families are being completely neglected. We are part of it because we are responsible for holding the system accountable, but it is not accountable. In fact, it has not been accountable for a long time.