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

I thank the Minister for getting the ball rolling with this housing strategy. However, I will not praise the strategy until I see how it works because, as we all know, and as I know having been a member of Kerry County Council for 14 years, the devil is always in the detail and we have to see, as Deputy Mattie McGrath stated, how the blockages that we have been dealing with over the past number of years will be dealt with.

The first pledge is to address homelessness. I have been told that in regard to Dublin, the making illegal of bed-sits has contributed greatly to the number of homeless sleeping on the streets. Maybe the Minister should look at how that could be overlooked or changed for the time being until we have more housing stock available.

In the past six years, Kerry County Council has built three houses but, unlike the Taoiseach and the former Minister, Deputy Kelly, I do not blame the local authorities. Since early 2015, when Deputy Kelly made an announcement that we had €62.5 million in Kerry for housing, there has been no house built yet because there has been blockages with the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government dealing with the applications for the social housing in places such as Killarney and Tralee. Thirty houses were to have been built in the summer of 2015 but to date there is no house built because there were four stages of approval demanded by the Department. Those four stages seem to go on forever. That is where I am asking the Minister to get involved and provide the staff, and ensure that the staff deal with the issues because there should only be one model for local authorities to deal with in respect of each type of housing. Whether it is a one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom, four bedroom or five bedroom house, there should be one model for the country. The current situation has been causing unreal delays in getting 30 houses built in Kerry. I ask the Minister to address that aspect.

If we are to provide more housing, we need more staff. As I understand it, even at present there is an embargo on local authorities getting staff. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, and the Minister of State, Deputy English, are shaking their heads. I know the blockages are still there because I deal with them every day. I go to Kerry County Council at least once a week, every Monday. I know what is happening there. There are still blockages. They do not have the additional staff. It was disingenuous of the Taoiseach to criticise the local authorities and lay the blame at their doorstep because they are not to blame. I can tell the Taoiseach - I will make no bones about it - I will be more critical of him than his own party colleague, Deputy Griffin, if this does not work or if he does not put his shoulder to the wheel and ensure that it does.

On the pledge to increase speed of delivery of social housing, I hope that this process will be streamlined and, as I stated, more staff will be put in place. On the pledge to increase the output of private housing to meet demand, the private builders tell me they cannot access funding or capital at present to build the houses and that when they do, they are charged an interest rate of 12%. They cannot work with that because, they tell me, in a €180,000 house they will only have a €4,000 or €5,000 profit. They cannot take all of the responsibility and deal with all of the liabilities for that little gain. Something has to be done with the banks that we are supposed to own.

On the pledge to utilise existing housing, I highlighted this at meetings of Kerry County Council which owns many such houses. When we were working on a programme for Government, I insisted that we look at these vacant properties to see if they could be brought up to scratch. I welcome this, if it can be made work. It involves a lot of work, if one gives a loan to the house owner or landlord and hopes to get back the rent after five years or whatever, but it is a laudable exercise. I ask the Minister to put extra effort into that. I hope he will do so because there are a lot of houses vacant in my county. I even know of one house in a prominent place in a street in the heart of Killarney which, they tell me, is vacant for 70 years.

I wish the Minister all the best with this housing strategy. He will have to get stuck in. Many commentators say we will have holidays but I do not anticipate that the Minister will take a holiday this summer because there is a lot of work to be done.

I have one other issue to raise. In County Kerry, the former national roads authority, NRA or, as it is now being called, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, has deprived three couples of getting planning permission exiting onto a national secondary route. This is very unfair. Whatever regulations they are going by now were signed into law by the then Minister of Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Varadkar, in 2012. I ask that the Minister look into that because it is depriving many in our county of access. All they are asking for is planning permission and they are being deprived of it by this one rule by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and TII.

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