Niamh Smyth (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The witnesses made a number of points with which I concur. I represent the Cavan-Monaghan constituency and we have a huge problem in west Cavan, which I see highlighted on the map. We have housing vacancy rates at greater than 23%. It is a whole part of the county. As Mr. Hogan said here, unless there is a spread of job opportunities, one cannot keep the young people there. It was interesting to hear him say that people choose where to live before they choose where to work, with which I would agree, but if there is nowhere to work it forces them in one direction. Particular attention and focus has to be given to the Border counties in light of Brexit as we are already on the back foot by virtue of being Border counties. Our local enterprise offices and our local authorities can already see where there has been stagnation. We are naturally a very industrious people in Cavan-Monaghan, we have had to do it on our own; there are very high rates of self-employed people because there have had to be. There are no big factories or big IDA Ireland companies coming into the constituency and the area does not have the infrastructure, which was discussed earlier. Cavan-Monaghan has none of that and is way behind on human capital, infrastructure and job opportunities. I would hope that the east-west link which has been talked about for the last ten or 15 years, probably since the national spatial strategy first came out, would be a big part of that. That one piece of infrastructure has the potential to address a lot of these issues in one sweep if the attention and funding was provided. We have already seen how the N3 has opened up Meath. Of course, it is on the periphery, it is the usual story. It stopped when it got to the border of Cavan but it has made a huge difference to people in Meath in terms of where they work and the access to Dublin.

One thing we need to be careful about is the situation we have returned to where housing has gone beyond the reach of most people, there have to be two people employed in every household to be able to get a mortgage. There was a time, particularly in east Cavan which is quite densely populated, where there were people who had sold their homes in Dublin in search of a better lifestyle and continued to work in Dublin but they felt that they did not fit in. Maybe that was partly our fault, maybe it was partly their fault too, that it was too great a leap, but people were caught. They might have been too far from their own family which remained in Dublin, they could not return to where they had come from and some just upped and left. There were vacant houses where there had been high density population, with people scrambling to get back to Dublin. That scenario happened too.

There is a reference to self-build in the witnesses' submission. I am always talking about this. We are still at the point where it is too expensive for people in rural Ireland to build houses in their local areas. People have to spend €30,000 to €40,000 on connections to sewerage and water and on development charges and it pushes people into the urban areas. Until that is addressed, places like west Cavan will not be developed because it is too costly, they do not have the opportunity, and the infrastructure is not there. We are back to basics such as roads and broadband and the east-west link must be part of the national strategy plan.

I do not have questions, more observations on what the witnesses presented here today.