Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is making it worse than what it was. It does not seem like six years when you win it. You think you only missed it for a year or two. It is all about nurturing and kindling the passion, the vision and the enthusiasm. Shopkeepers and the self-employed are asked day in and out for spot prizes for all these fund-raisers. They are the people who need to be supported but it is a kick in the teeth to cut back this funding.

I acknowledge there is money for Horse Racing Ireland and I agree there are issues with that body and with the greyhound board. However, I refer to the comments of Deputies Wallace and Clare Daly - tá said imithe - because they are forever jealous, as was Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan last night, of giving money to sheep farmers. Deputy O'Sullivan thought the money should have gone to hares. Hare coursing is humane, organised and regulated now and it is an industry. These Deputies keep talking about wanting jobs and industry, yet they want to hammer hare coursing, an industry that is vital to south and north Tipperary, home to my colleague, Deputy Cahill, and other parts of the country. It is an industry of the people, for the people and by the people. They pay their own money for veterinary fees. They buy their pups and have them impregnated. They use all the different services such as inoculation. The owners are registered and they have to have a van and a box to carry the dogs. They have to have kennels and proper accommodation. That all creates business and plenty of people cannot see that. They want to get rid of that but they want jobs for this, that and the other. Some of the people on the hard left want to banish all these things and they say then everything will be grand and rosy and we will have a Utopia that will fund everything. The people in this industry created it themselves. They enjoy it and give enjoyment to thousands. I condemn wholeheartedly cruelty to greyhounds and the horrible exports. That must be rooted out but it is for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Bord na gCon and other agencies to ensure that happens. Animal cruelty has no place in any industry or sport.

Roads funding also brings us back to the rural people or the little people. They are badly neglected. We have the NCT and more regulations are being introduced all the time by the TII, which used to be the NRA. I always said we got rid of the IRA in the peace process and then we got the NRA. It is untouchable. Nobody can talk to them or engage with them. They do what they like, when they like, where they like. You cannot even meet them as part of a deputation and they say they are not responsible to anyone else. They are not even responsible to the Minister when a parliamentary question is asked. Roads funding has been hammered. If we do not invest in our rural roads, it will cost ten times as much in years to come because the infrastructure is being eroded. If we get a bad, wet winter followed by frost, untold damage will be done. There has been a meagre increase in funding. I wish the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport well in fighting for funding at the Cabinet but it is not easy. We got the local improvements scheme included in the programme for Government and it will be introduced next year, which I welcome, because, as Deputy Healy-Rae said earlier, the half miles and the roads on Slievenamon, the Galtee Mountains or the Knockmealdown Mountains are as important as the M50. People living on them work and pay taxes and rates and they are entitled to have their local roads maintained as well as roads are elsewhere. All the money cannot be spent around Dublin.

We have no room to move in the city. We cannot get a bed in a hotel. Another Deputy who appeared on a programme with me last night said the tourism VAT rate should be increased from 9% to 30%. That is fine in Dublin if there is a boom but I know of hotels in Tipperary where last night a double decker load of people could have had beds. It is a two-tier Ireland and we need equality.

That 9% VAT rate was welcome when it came in. It stimulated the hospitality industry but the industry now faces Brexit. Nobody is talking about how hard it could be. Last week, I travelled from Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina and I encountered a hard border. We travelled on a new motorway built with EU money and we arrived at a hard border. We were there 50 minutes and every passport was taken off the bus and scrutinised. Do we want to go back to tailbacks from Newry and Crossmaglen on both sides of the Border? We have to be careful about what we wish for. That is the real impact of a hard border.

There is neglect everywhere outside Dublin and not just the west. You will find it even in Naas and Drogheda.

Everything is for the capital city but not everything is great in the capital city either, as evidenced by the homeless problem. Deputy Wallace spoke of how councils have oceans of land on which to build houses so what is the problem? Why can we not build houses? I was at a housing committee meeting this morning and I saw that we were going to fast-track legislation around An Bord Pleanála but we have to be very careful about what we do because the public is entitled to its say and to due process with regard to the planning process, both through themselves and their local elected representatives. The latter now seem to be unwanted on local authorities and no preplanning meetings are now allowed on sites in Tipperary involving a local elected councillor, who often could see things through, make sure nothing untoward was done and resolve disputes between neighbours over issues such as site distances. They were a very valuable resource but the county manager has decided there will be no more site meetings, saying it was because they did not have them in north Tipperary but had them in south Tipperary. They were very beneficial but, at the stroke of a pen, they were gone.

The document that enabled the disbandment of town councils and amalgamation of our county talked of putting people first. We closed doors in this regard and I cannot now get access to my own county council building in Clonmel. I am not entitled to it any more. Under the Act prescribing the abolishment of the dual mandate we were entitled to full access to meetings and the chamber but now we have to get a key fob and I have been told I cannot get one, for health and safety reasons. It is as though I might come in and knock down the building. It shows downright contempt for elected representatives on the part of mandarins who are acting above their station and are unelectable and unaccountable. Every day they come out with new policies but elected representatives are just a nuisance.

The councils were amalgamated by Big Phil the Enforcer, the former Minister who is now out in Europe in the sun. He wrecked local government and wrecked the Leader programme. Fine Gael paid the price for that in the election but that is no good to rural communities which had Leader projects waiting to be carried out. This morning the west Cork Leader programme appeared before a committee to plead for some decency and respect for what they had done, which led to them bring held up as a flagship operation all over Europe. Thankfully, the group had the guts, courage and stamina to make a complaint to the European Commission about the thuggish behaviour of the previous Government to banish Leader projects. The Leader programme, which was started by Ray MacSharry, was the best programme to come into this country. It worked from the bottom up and worked really well but the last Government abolished it. We are now talking about giving some funding back to it and I welcome the €150 million for this purpose but for two years we have had nothing. Entrepreneurs are willing to invest in projects to bring jobs to their communities but do not have the wherewithal. They have the expertise and are willing to have sleepless nights planning and organising their dreams for social cohesion and a decent standard of living in their communities. The Government's attitude was to hell or to Connacht. Thankfully we now have Independent Ministers in this area to keep their hands on the reins and a modicum of respect for ordinary citizens.

The Taoiseach replied to Deputy Healy-Rae to the effect that he could build houses himself in Kerry. Houses are not being built. I asked the Taoiseach to check with every county council how many houses had been built in the past four years, two years or six months and it is clear that they are not being built. Deputy Wallace gave a good explanation of why this was the case and it is as obvious as the nose on your face. We keep coming up with plans and revising current plans but it will not happen because the banks are not giving a shilling to anybody to build a house. These are the banks we bailed out. I voted for the bank guarantee and it was the biggest mistake I made in my life. We were told downright porkies and they got away with it. Our masters in Europe are now setting the parameters for our budget and saying how much we can spend or borrow. They are some friends: with friends like those we certainly do not need enemies. We need to stand up to them but we do not have much hope of that at the moment with a Commissioner who crushed his own people. He will not stand up for us any time soon.

We need respect for ordinary working people. I am glad the €5 increase was given because it was needed. There was a lot of criticism of the under-25s not getting it and I totally accept that for people who are disabled or cannot, under any circumstance, get work. These people should all be on schemes to help them get back into the workforce and they should get the full amount of almost €200 if they do so. It is fair and is an incentive to people to play an active part. There should be VAT relief on community and voluntary equipment such as defibrillators. Ambulances and the Red Cross are always fundraising for them and one of our friends from the world of horse racing, J. P. McManus, has given a fully equipped ambulance to the Limerick Red Cross costing €100,000. In Tipperary, the Red Cross has to supply ambulances on a regular basis if called on by the HSE or by families who want to get their loved ones to hospital. That is an insult to those volunteers, to the vehicles that were bought with the money raised and to the special paramedics who man them and who are all volunteers. It costs €900 for a private ambulance to bring someone from Tipperary to Waterford but the Red Cross has to do it while depending on donations from patients or families. The situation in Ireland today makes a mockery of them. During the talks with the Minister, Deputy Michael Noonan, he said there were three rates of VAT but there should be no VAT on defibrillators or the life-saving river rescue boats manned by suicide watch people because of the trauma caused by the economy and bullying by our banks. At the moment they have to pay VAT and cannot get it back, which just does not make sense. The Minister said he would examine it but it needs to be done.

We need a scheme for the rejuvenation of rural towns and villages. I looked at a recent county development plan and saw shops closed in every street in Tipperary, as they are around the country. They have been closed for five or ten years and will not be used again as commercial outlets so planners must have an open view and accept that they can be changed to living accommodation without people having to go through a variation of the county planning process or having to pay enormous fees. I put this into the plan but it was watered down. There is €8 million in the budget on top of the €6 million already given but we need living towns to come back again. It would sort out 25% of our housing crisis if we converted one part of a vacant premises, say the downstairs or the upstairs part. We should give an incentive, though we could not do so previously because the builders would get it, as will be the case with the latest first-time buyers' scheme because some developers will be unscrupulous. VAT relief should be given to people who want to buy these properties, not to builders or developers. In this way the towns can be inhabited again and people can be housed with dignity close to services. We should avoid the creation of places that become ghost towns after 6 p.m. In O'Connell Street in Clonmel two families live over the shop, as they have done for 50 years, and the town is dead. The people have moved out and there are anti-social issues but if planners would open their eyes we could solve a quarter of the housing crisis overnight. They should be imaginative and not look for fees of €20,000 to change a property from commercial to residential. They need to wake up and smell the coffee as regards fees and charges.

I know of four or five young couples who want to build a house in south Tipperary. They have employment and have a site but cannot get planning, for a variety of reasons. The planners want to know where they lived and where they were born and they almost need to know where they were conceived. Then there are fees and 25 different conditions. Roads fees, infrastructure fees and community fees, which I supported, and Irish Water bills make it unviable for someone to build a house. Deputy Danny Healy-Rae said this morning that the Nevin Institute had said 37% of the cost of a house went in fees but I believe it to be nearer 50%. It has been a gravy train for county councils and there was never any transparency as to how the money was spent. We were told it was spent on our general area but we never saw it. It is excessive and needs to be at least halved to give people incentives to build houses. People who want to build houses for themselves need to be allowed to do so and we need imaginative solutions, not big, glossy reports and changes to legislation. We need simple practical things and we need planners to understand the situation. I am not talking about reckless planning but ordinary small houses, sensible decent houses for which there are so many different regulations. We must not make it prohibitive and have rules whereby three and four generations have to be almost conceived on a site before they can get planning. It is farcical and planners are tied up in knots.

There was no imagination in the budget and I said it should have had some tax initiatives. I can see the hands of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Katherine Zappone, all over it in respect of care initiatives.

We should do all we can to support working parents but in doing so we should not undermine the family unit, which is almost alien nowadays. The mother or father who cares for the child or children in the home should also receive child care support. Self-employed people who operate businesses from their homes, as many do, also need to be supported. We need to be much more creative and fair in terms of what we do this area. We may find out in years to come that farming out children to full-time care was not the right solution.

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