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

I verify that I am in Leinster House. I thank the witnesses for attending. I raised a similar point last week because the first point I heard in the statements about numbers related to Dublin. I am interested to learn about the supply in Limerick. There is more to this country than Dublin. The statistics relating to Limerick are the ones I am most interested in. I am in construction myself. I am based in a rural setting. I welcome the cost-rental management system and the shared equity loan scheme. The biggest problem we have in Limerick is supply and demand and we have a major problem with infrastructure. Everyone is entitled to their culture in terms of where they are from and where they are living, and to represent that. In the context of developing Limerick as a whole, industry is based in the city or along the Shannon Estuary and infrastructure is at its lowest in the east of the county. How can we provide housing for people in villages and small towns where there is no industry? People want to return home to live in the area they are from, but there is no infrastructure there. We have forgotten about infrastructure other than in highly populated areas.

People who have been in rental accommodation as council tenants for 20, 30 or 40 years are not allowed to buy their own house once they reach pension age. When those people pass on, they want to leave their house to their family members so they can stay in the area where they grew up. From an infrastructural point of view, Kilfinnane recently got 21 houses, but only 15 of them could go on the main sewerage system. Six houses on a housing estate had to have their own private sewerage system because of a lack of infrastructure. There are 123 people on the housing list for more than ten years and there are no sewage facilities. Those people have all been turned down for planning. Askeaton has been waiting for a sewerage system for 30 years. Raw sewage is going into the Shannon. We can talk about supplying houses everywhere, but we cannot supply them if we do not have the infrastructure in key areas where people want to live. This goes back to the local authorities and their failure to invest in towns and villages. Housing cannot just go to people in highly populated areas.

Infrastructure is not only about sewerage; it is about bus services and connectivity. Once one leaves a highly populated area such as Limerick city, all the infrastructure falls away. Infrastructure only seems to follow industry. All of the county needs to be represented. I was part of the Limerick 2030 group when I was elected as a Deputy. My brother-in-law, John, is on the board. It is doing fantastic work. It started in the city and now it is moving out to the county to try to do exactly what I am talking about. The group is trying to get infrastructure in the places I have spoken about where there is no infrastructure so people can live in the entire county and not just in one section of it.

I would welcome a response first to the question on infrastructure and how to provide housing for people on housing lists where there is no infrastructure. My second question is about people in rental accommodation for many years who cannot purchase their houses once they reach pension age. That needs to be addressed.