Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I welcome all the groups here, especially the Macra group, and I wish the new president all the best in her tenure. Macra is a great organisation. We saw it in action in Kenmare last Sunday morning organising the tractor run from Kenmare to Kilgarvan with a team of youngsters involved. It gives the likes of me hope to see that set-up and to see them so active. It is great. There are a lot of days when I am in here or in the Chamber listening to other Oireachtas Members and it is like I come from a different world altogether. As small as the country is, the difference in views between the people representing the urban areas and the likes of us representing the rural areas is vast.

Just to take the issue of rental value alone, I have been highlighting in the Chamber for a number of weeks now the number of vacant houses that are along the road from Kenmare to Kilgarvan, almost to Killarney. We will say seven miles out from Killarney. They may not be all farmhouses or on farms but they are certainly attractive as far as I am concerned. There may be work to be done to some of them. There are two problems. Why are the houses idle? It is a shame when we think of people and all the noise about homelessness and that. However, the first thing is the rental value in those places is €500 or €600 a month. It would be taxed at 52% or 56%, which is often the case. All a person would have left out of that would be maybe €250 or €300 to pay the insurance and all the other things. The other big problem is when landlords want the house back, they cannot get it back because the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, is insisting on regulations that are favouring the people who are in the houses. They just cannot get their house back. That is one thing.

I think the girls are right here when they say they do not believe the figures. The figures that are being given for vacant houses are not true at all. Many of the houses that are counted, I fear, are inside in the middle of the farmyard. When the house was left idle first, the next thing was perhaps a shed was built up against the back of it. We cannot count that as an option for someone to live in that house, even family members. It is no good to count them out of the sky or from a satellite. We need to go on the ground and see what is happening there. The vacant house grant is great. We have been looking to tweak it since it came in last October. It only applied to someone if that person going to live in the house and it was going to be their permanent place of residence. Now the house can be rented out.

There is another problem. I spoke to a fella the other day who put in for planning permission to knock a lot of the house and rebuild it. He was refused the planning permission because he already got planning permission for his own new house and this house was there in a farmyard that he wanted to restore to life. He would have rented it out. He had to withdraw the planning because when it was not going to be his permanent place of residence, the grant was no good to anything that he would get. We have to see what is happening with the planning that is required for derelict or vacant houses. I fear the planners are going to reject it so the grant will be null and void. If people have to have planning permission, maybe to what the council standards are and maybe with a septic tank or whatever, when it comes to the thing and they are asked if they have had another house before, I do not think many of them would qualify in Kerry anyway. I blame the Planning Regulator.

We have another scenario now in Kerry as well. So much of Kerry, especially the Killarney area, is considered to be under strong urban pressure. Senator Lombard was saying that people need to be from the area. I know several fellas that are from the area but they are not farmers. They can buy a site from the farmer but they will not get permission for it. I had a case last week of a woman is not even a mile or a kilometre from her mother and father. She can buy a site. She is ten miles out from Killarney but it is still considered an area under strong urban pressure and she will not get permission for it. I blame the Planning Regulator for that. When the county development plan was being put together last year, the council fought hard but failed. Management had to go by the Planning Regulator's guidelines and they had to conform. That is where that is.

Then we have another scenario like that raised by Deputy Fitzmaurice. Since 2012, it is not Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, that is to blame but when the Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, was Minister for Transport at that time, his Department insisted that TII adopt these regulations. I do not think it is hurting any other county like it is hurting Kerry. There is up to 500 miles of national road in Kerry between primary and secondary roads. It is possible to come in east at Rathmore and go all the way to Cahersiveen, all the way around the Ring of Kerry, up to the tunnel at Moll's Gap, and go from Kenmare down in over the tunnels up in Bunane and come back down into Kenmare, into Moll's Gap, back into Killarney again and up to Listowel and Castleisland, and all those roads people cannot come out anywhere.

Then we have another story where, for the past 20 years since 2004, there is a bypass proposed for Killarney. There are four different routes and all that land is sterilised from Farranfore to Killarney, from Lissyviggeen to Muckross. Planning is nearly a no-no now. I welcome that farmers' sons and daughters can get it but no one else can. We are told to go into towns and villages and there is no sewerage plant in Currow or in Scartaglin where our great friend Tom Fleming comes from. There is no treatment plant. There are so many places looking for extensions for sewerage. We cannot build a housing scheme in Kenmare because the treatment plant is not up to scratch. We can get permission for one house but not for a scheme of houses. There has not been permission got there for a scheme of houses for 15 years. That is where we are.

On the objectives, I can go back to 2004 which is nearly 19 years ago.

I put a motion before Kerry County Council at that time asking the objection fee be raised to €2,000. Almighty God, I was bellowed out of the place. If it was feasible to put €2,000 on it at that time, it should be €20,000 now. In all fairness, it should be a hundred times more than it is. On the levies, Senator Lombard said there are no levies for things you do not get in Cork. Maybe that is so, but his comrades in Kerry voted to put a levy for playgrounds, whether you were from a farm in Gneevgullia, Beaufort, Killorglin or wherever it is.