Mrs. Alice Doyle:

I have personal experience in this area. My daughter applied for planning permission to build on the farm. She will take over the farm. She has not built the house yet. She decided to buy rather than build, even though we had given her the site, because the levies were more than €3,000. That was for street lighting, sewerage and water connection. The nearest one to us is probably 7 km away. We were told that the soonest they will have room to build houses in that village is seven years. She wisely decided to hold onto the site for the next five years and maybe do something with it then, but would buy a house in the meantime where she can get all of those things.

I live in County Wexford where there is a huge number of holiday homes and I want to address the Deputy's point on that. Trying to get those houses used for accommodation would be absolutely impossible. Most people who own those holiday homes use them for three months of the year but they are not open to having them used for anything else during the rest of the year. Unfortunately, I cannot see holiday homes being a way to free up housing. The owners see them as their private property and believe they have their right to their holiday time and so on.