Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

First, I apologise for not being able to talk in Irish. I was not lucky enough to have been born in the Gaeltacht area or perhaps to have gone to colleges or whatever to educate myself in the Gaelic language, but that is not to say that I do not respect it and the witnesses. I can identify with the problems they have and, through the translation, I have heard everything they have said. I welcome the witnesses here today. I am well aware of many of the problems they have mentioned, but in places far away from the Gaeltacht. I know it is also happening in the Gaeltacht.

Ms Ní Bhraonáin spoke about being away for five years and I am glad she came back because, just last Saturday evening, I was canvassing a half-mile of a road and there were three separate going-away parties happening in three different houses for three girls who were going to Australia. I spoke to each of them and wished them well. I asked one if she would she be coming back and she said she did not think so because more of her friends are out there now than are here. I hope the powers-that-be upstairs are listening because that is happening.

Many of our lovely young people, who have been educated to a high degree and a standard, cannot see a way to get the simple, basic thing they are asking for, that is, planning permission. My colleague Deputy Ó Cuív says he is always interested in new ideas. Go back to the old ideas when people could get planning permission. The situation has reached such a stage in Kerry that if you are not a family member on a family farm, you will hardly get planning permission for anywhere else. The only option for you then is to go to some expensive place like Killarney, Dingle or Kenmare, which are highly touristed areas where houses and sites are expensive. I identify with the idea of clusters. On the Dingle Peninsula, there used to be several villages of six or seven houses. They lived together and were grand. That cluster proposal for planning purposes was done away with in Kerry approximately 15 years ago – I was on Kerry County Council – or even further back.

It has been mentioned that local authorities could do more. The local authorities and planners’ hands are tied behind their backs because there is a Planning Regulator, appointed in Dublin by the Government, overruling decisions made by the elected members of Kerry County Council. The members include different stipulations and ideas in the county development plan only for it to come to Dublin and the Planning Regulator not to ratify it. He goes back to council management and asks it to get the members to change their views, otherwise he will not accept it. Much of what the elected members propose and agree on by majority vote, or sometimes by a unanimous vote, is rejected by the Planning Regulator up here, who was put in place by this Government. It is this Government and no one else who is responsible for this situation.

Mention was made by Mr. Ó hÉallaithe – he has the same name as me – of sewerage facilities. That is another issue this Government does not want to hear about. I have raised it several times. I will mention the village of Moyvane. People cannot get planning permission for even one more house anywhere in or around that town because the treatment plant is overburdened. There are at least 30 plants awaiting an expansion in capacity. Two grand, proud villages – Currow and Scartaglin – have no sewage treatment plants. I worked with Mr. Tom Fleming – he was a councillor at the time and was a TD before I was elected to the Dáil – and we had Scartaglin up at the top of the list. It was No. 1 for getting a treatment plant. That was almost 20 years ago, though, and there has been no account of it since. I have raised this matter several times in the Chamber, but the Government is just not listening. The Minister for the environment, Deputy Eamon Ryan, is not interested in any pipe under the ground or any treatment plant. He talks about airy-fairy ideas and blames the council, a few cars and people burning turf for environmental problems. He has no interest at all in insisting that communities or little villages get treatment plants. There was supposed to be a treatment plant in Kilcummin 24 years ago. What has happened since? The sewage is piped down into Killarney, overburdening the treatment plant there. No one can connect to that pipe because it is 20 ft or 24 ft under the ground. I asked people to leave out connections, but would they do it? I asked for that in the Chamber two or three times, but the Government was not interested in doing it.

Regarding long-term letting and short-term lets like Airbnbs, I firmly believe that, if a person gets planning permission to build a house or had the house before there even was anything like planning permission, that person should be able to do whatever he or she wants to do with the house, be that renting it for the short term or the long term, selling it or putting his or her own people into it. That is the person’s right if he or she was responsible for putting the house there in the first place. If the Government thinks that stopping Airbnbs will help long-term letting, its head is buried in the sand because that will not happen. There is a serious problem with that idea. Mention was made of 100-plus houses somewhere. In the Chamber a number of weeks ago, I said I could count 55 vacant houses along the road from the top of the town in Kenmare to Kilgarvan and on to the Kerry Way, which is approximately six miles from Killarney. For two reasons, people will not let those houses. First, they would pay 52% tax. I asked in the Chamber what would happen if the same rate was applied to the people who were renting housing to Ukrainians. There is a tax-free monthly payment of €800 to someone who rents a house to Ukrainians. Why is the same facility not afforded to the houseowner who wants to rent to a local person? That is discrimination. The Tánaiste made snide remarks about me when I raised this issue in the Chamber and more or less said I was racist and belonged to the far right. I do not know where the far right is. All I am doing is representing the people on the ground.

Second, the RTB would be too strict if any of those 55 houseowners wanted to get their houses back. Tenants should be afforded due process when leaving the house after so many months or whatever, but the RTB is putting every blockage in the way and helping them to stay full term. If someone wants his or her house back, that person should be entitled to get it back when he or she wants.

These are the blockages-----