Billy Timmins (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

I was enjoying Deputy Hayes's animated contribution. I proposed the abolition of the first-time buyer's grant during previous debates in the House. I suggested that it would be appropriate in the context of a front-loaded mortgage system, at a time when most first-time buyers were buying second-hand homes. Such people were not benefiting from the grant. If the grant had been index-linked at the time of its abolition, it would have been worth approximately €13,000. The grant was originally introduced to boost the building industry. During the most recent debate on the matter, I noticed that the Minister of State's speech writers had selected parts of a contribution I had made. I hope he will refrain from quoting selectively from me this evening. If such comments are contained in his script, I am sure he will ignore them.

I would like to speak about the new guidelines for one-off rural housing. I have said to the Minister, Deputy Roche, that I cannot understand how he succeeded in giving everybody the impression that houses could be built easily on the basis of a document that was welcomed by the vice-president of An Taisce. Given that the policy he has introduced satisfies those on both extremes of the argument, it is clear that one group of people has been misled. Many people who have been refused planning permission or have had to withdraw planning applications, but now think they will succeed in being granted planning permission if they resubmit their applications, have been misled on this occasion. I regret to advise such people that they will not be successful.

I have to hand it to the Government, the acceptance of the recently published guidelines means that it has succeeded with a fantastic con job. As someone who is heavily involved in one-off rural housing, I believe that the problems associated with such housing are often misrepresented and overstated. The vast majority of people in rural areas are granted planning permission. Most planners agree that such people should be allowed to build houses in local rural areas. Everybody believes that people from the countryside should be granted planning permission in such areas — it is as popular as apple pie and ice cream.

Difficulties can arise when an applicant wants to build a house on top of a hill, for example. In such circumstances, it often seems that the local authority and the planning officials want to bury the applicant before he or she dies. A conflict often arises in such instances, but there should be a happy medium. The matter was addressed in County Wicklow when the county's development plan stated that while views and prospects should be taken into consideration, they should not be considered to the exclusion of social or economic needs, other than in the Wicklow Mountains National Park. The national park covers an area of 41,000 acres, but there is a target of increasing its size to approximately 60,000 acres. The natural heritage section of the new planning document, which deals with views and prospects and matters like ridge lines, retains the existing policy in that regard. I am sure the planning authorities will use the document to refuse planning permission in rural areas.

I acknowledge that there is no easy solution when people living in towns want to move to a location in the countryside that is half a mile or a mile away. The Government has created the impression that people will be able to do so under the new guidelines, but I will wait with bated breath to see whether that is actually the case. When the authorities in County Wicklow sought to address this aspect of the matter by zoning small areas of land near crossroads, churches and schools for the construction of between five and ten houses, they put some very restrictive conditions on those who wanted to build in such areas. If one wishes to get planning permission in such areas, one has to be a permanent native resident of the locality, which is defined as any area within 8 km of the site. The scheme has not been successful, unfortunately, because sites in the areas in question became as expensive as serviced land when the expectations of landowners increased.

My opinion of the document is that the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. I regret to say that I am confident that many of the difficult cases I have encountered — I acknowledge that they are difficult to solve — will not be addressed. The biggest fault I have with the Government is that it has increased expectations in this area.

While some people claim that the new document is innovative, I am critical of its introduction of the concept of exceptional medical reasons for granting planning permission. That provision will be open to wholesale abuse. All Members of the House have encountered people who have had to relocate as a consequence of medical difficulties. The provision made in the development plan for such people will open the system to wholesale abuse. Those who should not be granted planning permission, but are granted it because of misinformation on the planning file, often encounter as many difficulties as those who are not granted planning permission. I ask the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, to bear that in mind.

I welcome the timely motion before the House. During the local government election campaign, Fine Gael produced an excellent policy that involved the establishment of a savings account for first-time buyers. It makes sense to front-load the provision of mortgage interest relief. It can be done within the funding that is provided under the relief at present. When one has been paying one's mortgage for seven or eight years, one faces a straight run and one's economic burden starts to decline in comparison to earlier years. I ask the Minister of State not to quote me out of context when I state that mortgage interest relief should be stopped after ten years. It should be front-loaded so that individuals benefit significantly from it during the first ten years of mortgage payments and not at all thereafter. The funding that is spent on helping people who have been making mortgage payments for ten years should be used to subsidise those in the first tranche.

Officials in County Wicklow have sought to overcome the difficulties associated with development levies. I understand where the Government is coming from in this regard. I do not like to hear the Minister for Finance or other Government spokespersons extolling the virtues of this country's tax rates of 40% and 22%, while ignoring the stealth taxes they are charging in many other areas. We imposed a low levy on houses in County Wicklow, but the local authority overcame that by using section 48 of the Planning and Development Act 2000, which provides for the imposition of an additional levy in exceptional circumstances. Levies of between €20,000 and €25,000 per house in a development are being charged. People do not realise they are paying such moneys as well as VAT and other taxes.

I would like the Government to have the courage to state that its policy is to impose the form of tax I have mentioned. In such circumstances, members of local authorities would be much more reasonable in their implementation of that policy. The Government is happy to take the credit at national level for a tax rate of 40%, while local councillors take the hit for the high levies which have resulted from its policies.

I assume the Minister of State realises that the Government needs to examine the eligibility and qualification criteria for the affordable housing scheme because there are many anomalies in the system at present. Many people are told they do not qualify because their wages exceed the threshold for the scheme, even though some of those who qualify, particularly in the greater Dublin area, cannot produce the money to meet the cost of the house.

A directive issued in 1994 by the then Department of the Environment stated that houses should not be built within 50 m of a landfill site because of the dangers of gas etc. I estimate that between 15 and 20 vents from an illegal landfill are as close to houses in the Woodleigh estate in Blessington, County Wicklow, as I am to the Minister of State, who is sitting across the floor of the House. Waste has been lying in the illegal landfill for a couple of years and nothing is being done about it. I am glad that Fine Gael proposes to table a motion asking the Minister to use his powers under section 60 of the Water Management Act 1996 to direct the relevant authorities to remove that waste.

I commend Deputy O'Dowd for proposing this worthwhile motion. I wish my colleague from the Gaeltacht well.

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