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

The witnesses are saying the cost is, roughly, €220,000 after the funding is accounted for. We must then look at housing in the context of the funding that is going to be introduced for rural houses in towns and villages. Some of the houses that will come under this scheme will not be on the sewerage system and there will be an immediate cost of a minimum of €10,000 in this regard. Regarding those properties that will qualify under the sewerage schemes, the capacity in the towns and villages I mentioned earlier has already been exceeded.

This goes back to the infrastructure problem we have in the rural parts of the county compared with the metropolitan parts which do have infrastructure. Many of our towns and villages which want to avail of this scheme are already caught because they do not have the infrastructure. This is not the fault of the councils. It is the fault of Governments that did not provide the proper funding for the development of infrastructure in the first place. It is also connected with the changeover in responsibility from the local authorities to Irish Water. Many of the sewerage systems were left because the changeover was imminent. They were not updated.

People in rural areas are at the back in everything because the infrastructure is not there. This was the point I was making earlier to Ms Curley. I am here to represent the people in the rural areas. We are on the back foot because of the lack of infrastructure. I go around the towns and villages in County Limerick. Killmallock and Croom are in a good state, while Adare is okay. When I go out into places like Hospital and Dromcolliher, though, and then head on to Glin and Foynes, where we are now looking at infrastructure, the people living in these places are not on the same playing field as people living in Limerick city. This whole matter comes back to infrastructure and the need for us to provide it to the people living in the towns and villages.

I keep returning to the subject of the towns and villages. To build up our areas, where people want to live because they are familiar with the culture and they can live alongside the friends they have had all their lives, we must put in transport infrastructure that will let people travel to the city. They will then support the city, like they used to do years ago. The first thing people wanted to do then was to head in to the city to do their weekly shopping. It has now been made more convenient and this means they do not have to travel as much. In these towns and villages we have many voids and houses that need to be done up. As Ms Curley said, this comes back to the problem of money. I am a contractor and €11,000 will do nothing in a house, whether it is a three-bedroom or four-bedroom house or whatever. It would hardly do anything in a two-bedroom property. In this day and age, the windows and doors for a three-bedroom house will cost around €6,000. The budget is blown at that point.

With regard to insulation and the grants available, despite all the goodwill from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, no one is available to do the work required. When they are available to do this work, they move into the cities where they can get a line of 20 houses to work on, which will make it viable. Two or three houses together will not be considered because it is not viable to undertake that work.

All the funding being provided is benefiting the cities. The LDA project is a city project and has nothing to do with a rural area. There is no funding available in County Limerick from the LDA outside of the boundaries of Limerick city. All that is being looked at is the area within a 15-minute window of Limerick city. That includes Croom, Adare and Patrickswell but nowhere else. Only areas within a 15-minute proximity of Limerick city are being considered, which wipes out more than two thirds of the county I represent.

On the affordable purchase scheme, some people say the average income now is between €25,000 and €30,000. The scheme is fine until we look at the minimum wage, which is €10.50. This means two people in a house working for the minimum wage will only be earning approximately €40,000 overall. When we take account of inflation and trying to rear a family, these people will have nothing left, whether houses are regarded as affordable to buy or not.

From the perspective of the schemes, more money must be given to local authorities to address voids. Limerick City and County Council owns 178 voids, many of which have been left there. We are also now talking about people who have voids themselves. We are talking about fining them under the heading of dereliction when we have 178 properties of our own that are void, some of which are in a state of dereliction. The council is not getting the funding required from the Department to address that. On one hand, we are fining people who have derelict properties while, on the other, the council can still not get the money from the Department to fix long-term voids. We are punishing people on one hand, while on the other hand the Department is saying it has no money to give to the council to address its derelict properties.

I refer to the big money required to bring these properties out of a state of dereliction. What we want is a bit of even play in this regard. There are people who have derelict properties and want to bring them up to standard but cannot afford to do so. They need help. Bringing such properties out of a state of dereliction will mean they will be going back to being regarded as void and we can put people into them and they will be counted as community builds.

Let us look at the parishes I represent. We now have parishes joining up. Before we had Granagh-Ballingarry. Now we have Granagh-Ballingarry-Croom at certain ages because they cannot get the required number of people. We want the same thing in the county that the city has, that is, the numbers. We do not, however, have the infrastructure. I want money for County Limerick for infrastructure. I want the local authority to build and then support the city and everything around it. This would give me a business study in respect of infrastructure for everyone in Ireland.

On travel, we heard someone refer to getting the last train out of here. People are lucky to be able to get a train. If I have to get a train, I have to go to Charleville. If I am delayed in the Dáil until 11 p.m. and cannot get the last train out of Dublin at 9 p.m., I cannot get the train at Charleville and have to take a bus that will drop me in Adare or Annacotty. I leave my car in Charleville, however, so someone would have to come and collect me . Infrastructure should be provided for all and money should be provided for local authorities. They can prove that they can produce the goods when they get the funding. We need such funding, however, as much for rural areas as we do for metropolitan areas.