Mr. Brian Rushe:

I will pass the question on to Ms Doyle in a second, but I will make a comment on the piece around vacancy and dereliction rates. The Senator mentioned counties Leitrim, Roscommon, Sligo and Donegal. Then we come down to County Kildare where there are low dereliction rates. There is a similar problem in Leitrim and Kildare as regards availability. People cannot live on derelict and vacant sites. It takes a lot of money and time to do them up. In Kildare, nothing is available. There is an issue in both of those extremes. People cannot buy them because they cannot get the finance. They cannot rent them because they are either not available for rent or not fit to be rented. They cannot do them up or build on them. That is an issue. People in those counties, whether it is Roscommon or Kildare, are looking for homes. Our colleagues in Macra na Feirme are quite right that we are talking about homes. They want to live in their communities but there are roadblocks and friction in the system that delay everything. In my period as county chairman in Kildare and west Wicklow, I often met farmers whose son or daughter wanted to come home to farm and live on the farm and they were refused planning permission on the basis of local need. I do not know what more local need there is than for people to live in and contribute to the community they were born in. In many cases they were coming home to live close to elderly parents and provide the care that was required. That is a service to the State. It is the same issue between both things. We must remove the friction. It goes back to our submission. We must make this process easier as regards finance and planning permission. We must remove the friction for genuine cases. I am not talking about speculation. I am talking about people who are looking to build homes and live in the areas in which they were born.