Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Feeney. I will now proceed to my monologue. Like Deputy O'Donoghue, I hope the delegates can give me some comfort with their responses. I hope that whoever is answering my next question has a mother or mother-in-law from Longford. Probably only 11 counties are being actively encouraged to come forward with an affordable housing scheme. In Longford, we have not built a three-bedroom semi-detached house in 12 years. This is the starter home in the housing market — an entry-level house. All the reasons are known. It was too expensive to build such a house and much cheaper to buy a second-hand house. Effectively, in a large swathe of rural Ireland we have a non-functioning housing market. Covid has shown that people are quite happy to live in rural Ireland and want to return to living there. Most companies are quite happy for people to live there. If we are serious about tackling the housing crisis, it makes perfect sense to enable people, within reason, to live in rural Ireland. Having said all that, I contend it is increasingly difficult, if not nigh impossible, for the county councils and other local authorities to get approval through the Department. Given the affordable housing structure required in local authorities' proposals, the answers the Department wants simply cannot be supplied. Despite this, I can state anecdotally that if we had an affordable housing scheme in Longford tomorrow morning, there would certainly be more than 200 applicants, most of whom would qualify for the local authority housing loan, which the delegates' good office would be financing.

We are building up to what will probably be a perfect storm regarding housing in rural Ireland. In the year to date regarding leases, including rental accommodation scheme leases, in Longford, 22 landlords have issued a notice to exit the market. The houses will be snapped up and we will have more people coming to the local authority. Obviously, the delegates hear about this from other local authorities, not just Longford County Council. Is there an appetite at the level of the representatives, given that they are in partnership with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, to tell the Department that we need to be more proactive regarding affordable housing, make things easier and actively encourage every local authority to produce an affordable housing scheme?