Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief because time is ticking by and we have to go round a group of different people for answers. This is more a statement, so that may not be necessary. People may want to comment when they answer other contributors. I apologise for the voting scenario earlier. I hate having to leave a meeting. I had my hand up and I was probably first in. I do not know a lot of what has been discussed. I am not making a party political broadcast or a statement on behalf of the Government. Far be it from me to do so, and I think everyone knows me at this stage. Like Senator Lombard, I welcome this grant. It is a positive move and a step in the right direction. To be brutally honest, the agenda item is the revitalisation of derelict and vacant houses on farmland. We will leave one-off planning, and development levies and all of that aside. If I had walked in off the street without reading the presentations or being so up to speed, I would say that no vacant or derelict houses will be developed on farmland. We have the representative bodies of farmers here, and the farmers who own that farmland and those derelict houses. From what I am picking up, they are not buying into this. I get it. I know my scenario at home. It is very hard to sell a farmhouse. The farmhouse is probably in the middle of the farm because that is how they were built. In my situation, the farmhouse is in the middle of the farm. When I was a chap, my grandparents were in it. My father moved out to the hill beside the house. He built a house and we were reared in it. By the time I was ready to put down my anchor the grandparents had died. Neither I, nor the lady I was bringing in, was ever going to look at the old house. Without a grant, even with the younger siblings, the old house was still not a runner. If there had been a grant of €100,000, maybe my parents would consider moving back to where my father was born. It would not need planning permission. It might not even need an extension. It would have taken very little of the €100,000 to make it liveable for them, if you were to leave A, B, C ratings and all of that out of it. I could possibly have moved into their house. I see this more as a succession advantage. I do not see the logistics of it with the geography of farms. I accept not many farmers can sell a house. There are not many people who would buy a house where they are on farms, and move into the middle of a working farm.

With that in mind, this grant is not going to be a major success, unless it is from a succession point of view. As Senator Lombard said, the witnesses here have a role to play in selling it as succession and downsizing. There may be potential for people of my age, who are still the children of the house and might want to come home and be a carer. We have to look at it from every angle. I am not being critical, but I was a bit taken aback to see that it was all negativity. I know a lot of negativity was around issues that are not on the agenda. We will talk about the vacant and derelict houses on the farmland. Can the witnesses see any positives or potential in what is being offered here, or is it a non-runner? I would almost say, from the message I am getting this evening, that I could go back to the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, in the morning and tell him that this money may be better spent somewhere else. There does not seem to be an appetite.