Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 10 May 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Housing Provision for Older People: Discussion

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

I am sorry to cut across Ms Timmons. People live in small villages where there is no infrastructure so if you are an elderly person, for example, you have lived your whole life in a village or a small town where there is no infrastructure to carry out what I am talking about. Then you are being offered to move 20 miles away where there is elderly housing. That takes people away from the friends and families they have built up around them over a lifetime. That does not address towns and villages. There is no infrastructure for the towns and villages to do what the Department wants to do. With the greatest of respect I am a rural person and I have lived outside of the villages and towns. I live in a parish with 396 people and there is no infrastructure in the village. In Banogue village, where I was born, there is no infrastructure. I do not want to move 20 miles away or have people in my community have to move 20 miles away as they will lose the network of people they have gone to mass with and met at the shop. That is not housing for all and that is not covering everyone in County Limerick. What is happening here is that the towns and villages do not have the infrastructure. We only have three towns in County Limerick that have infrastructure; the rest of them are gone. The local authorities know about this and now they are looking at putting plans in place for infrastructure that will not include two-thirds of County Limerick. I need the Department to help me to highlight this to the Government.

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