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

There is a building crisis. All of us who have been elected to the 32nd Dáil must work together to see what we can do for those who need housing. To put matters in perspective, I note that birds have nests for their chicks, foxes have dens for their cubs and rabbits have burrows for their young and so forth. Families - parents - need warm, safe homes for their children. Whether it is to provide social housing or help people who are trying to build houses for themselves, we must do our best to ensure that happens.

A number of factors are militating against house building. Builders cannot access funding from banks. They will not provide it, even though they are owned, by and large, by the State.

If builders get funding from other financial houses, interest of 12% is demanded of them. They cannot work like that. They tell me that their margins would be as low as 2%. To build a house in Kerry, the average cost is approximately €220,000. This means that a builder would only get €4,000 or €5,000 after taking all of the risk. He or she would have to pay tax out of that. It would not work.

I know of a young man who wants to borrow €100,000 to build a house on his farm but the bank will only give him €180,000. He can do much of the work himself and fix the house up enough to have a kitchen, bathroom and bedroom as a start for himself and his wife. That is all he wants to do but if the bank keeps insisting that he must borrow €180,000, he does not have the income to ensure that he gets the mortgage. Issues such as this need to be addressed.

Many middle-income earners cannot get mortgages. If they do, they must pay €80,000 of the €220,000 in taxes, including VAT. This amount must be paid for throughout their mortgages, be they for 20, 25 or 30 years. There is also approximately €15,000 in development levies. Working together, the Government and local authorities must do something to address these issues.

The Minister needs to be more accurate in his language than when he announced €62.5 million for housing in the likes of Kerry in 2014. In 2013, €1.3 million was supposed to be made available for housing. After inquiring to see what had gone wrong, we found out that, although an announcement had been made, there were four stages of approval to go through before any house could be built. In Kerry, three local authority houses have been built in the past eight years. As to the four stages of approval, a design must first be sent to the Department for its agreement, which takes three or four months. The next stage involves design changes, which take three or four more months. The council's costings are then sent but the Department might not agree with them. One can never determine the cost until a project is put out to tender. People ask us where the €62.5 million has gone but it was never there. We have been held up in red tape because the Department insists on unreasonable requirements.

Some of the schemes, for example, the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, and long-term leasing, are not working because the caps are too low. In Killarney town where houses are like gold dust, rent has increased to €900 but the cap is somewhere around €600. People fear that they will be out on their ears because rents are increasing. This is a fact. We need to address the caps. If the Minister does not, many more people will become homeless in Kerry.

I thank the Ceann Comhairle, as I know that my time is up.

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