Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for missing my slot and thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to speak at this late stage.

It is right that we address this issue and I congratulate those who identified it. Some developers obviously raised it with Deputies and sought to have amending legislation introduced. We should proof all legislation passed in the House. Last night, I stated that all Bills should be rural proofed, especially when they have a significant impact on rural areas. It is obvious that a recent planning Act contained a flaw. Much of the legislation passed by the House is flawed and it should not be unwieldy or difficult to correct such flaws. All legislation should be re-examined after a maximum bedding in period of 12 months. We have had ludicrous examples of legislation having unintended consequences. In many cases, the common man is unable to use, work with or manage legislation. This applies in respect of An Garda Síochána and in other areas. The issue must be addressed to ensure we do not pass unworkable legislation that makes a bad situation worse.

I am a member of the Committee on Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government. I apologise for not attending many of its meetings but it is difficult to do so as I am a member of a number of other committees. Another reason for my frequent absences is that I am weary of all the talk about rebuilding Ireland and providing houses. The debate is going around in circles and getting nowhere.

I declare an interest to the extent that I am involved in the construction industry through my business, although I supply services rather than build houses. While I do not know what is wrong with the housing sector, I fully support the amendment proposed in the Bill to address one issue. I am glad that people who had the noble vision of building a home for themselves will benefit from the provision. They were not looking for the State to provide them with a house and went through all the hoops to secure planning permission. Some of them could not get a mortgage in the final hour because the banks went bust. They may be getting back on their feet again and wish to build a home. I am glad such people will have their planning permissions extended by five years.

I support the provision relating to developments of 20 houses or more but concerned that it does not make reference to developments of five or ten houses. I am also worried that it does not impose an upper limit on the number of homes in a development that will benefit from the provision. I made a submission on the Tipperary county development plan, which was not accepted, in which I argued that planning permission should not be granted for developments of 100 or 200 houses in small villages. During the boom times, developers sought planning permission to build 200 houses in small villages. In my village, we fought the developer tooth and nail but he secured planning permission for 99 houses. Thankfully, these homes were not built because they would have ended up as a derelict site. The developer in question ended up in the National Asset Management Agency and left the country but has since returned having bought all of his property back from NAMA. These large developments change the character of villages and communities.

We do not hear anything about community facilities. We fought the planners for a playground and a site to extend the community hall. Across the pond in the UK, community facilities are part and parcel of planning applications and will be thrown out if they do not include such facilities. This is necessary because the character of many villages, including a small number in County Tipperary, has been changed by large housing developments. The Ceann Comhairle will be more familiar with this problem than I am because housing need is greater in the commuter towns and villages of County Kildare. I am concerned that the Bill does not impose a cap or upper limit on the number of housing units in a development. I understand that a development may have 50 completed homes which have been sold and are occupied, with a further 40 under construction and 50 or 60 more not yet started. It is fair enough to have phased developments but some type of upper limit must apply.

As I stated, the Bill must be reviewed and a provision included to monitor how many homes are being built. The Minister and his colleague, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, can do one basic thing.

People have been critical of Mr. Tom Parlon. I am no spokesperson for him, but we are not getting houses delivered privately, so we must consider the VAT rate. During the talks on forming the Government last year, we fought hard on this issue with the Minister, Deputy Donohoe's, predecessor, Deputy Noonan. He flatly told us that we could only have three rates of VAT. We could half the rate and insist that the city and county councils - not request, but insist, because we have power over them - cut their crazy development levies. As a councillor, I supported the levies in the boom time. In particular, I supported and defended the community charge. I was criticised for that but it proved beneficial for child care facilities, playgrounds and many other pieces of infrastructure that would not have existed otherwise. There is a full section in England, but we only added it in at the end. There was a roads charge and a water charge.

We could cut the charges and the rate of VAT by half, but we do not want to cut them for the builders. Cut them for the people who are buying the houses or, in particular, handling their own builds and pass the benefit on to them. We could get house building going. I have spoken with builders. The construction industry and others tell us that building for the current prices is not viable. House prices in Dublin are crazy, but not in the country.

The change of use situation is crazy. I spoke with a small businessman who had built a brand new premises and refurbished an old building beside the famed Hearns Hotel and Bianconi House in Clonmel. The business did not go well, though, and he told me one day that he was thinking of changing his modern building into five apartments. He had hired an engineer, done the design work and went to his accountant and his bank. The council told him that he could make the change, that it would be no big deal and that he would have to apply for a change of use but then he learned how much the fees would cost. Along with the VAT, they accounted for 48% of the project. His accountant told him that he had no hope of getting funding for that from the bank. When he went to the bank, it laughed at him. He was caught. That 48% of the cost is in the hands of the Minister, the Oireachtas and the council equally. We could sort it out for people with two strokes of a pen.

There are empty buildings in every town in the country. I talked to a poor person who owned a shop that had been closed for 20 years. He is a man of nearly 90 years who lives upstairs. He fell, so he wanted a disabled person's grant, DPG, to do something downstairs. It was a fine big shop at one time. It was beautifully preserved and its front, with bars, windows and all, was listed. It was lovely. He would not have touched any of that. He was only going to put a timber and slab partition and a downstairs toilet in a corner of a room. It was not to be because while he could get the grant, he would have to get planning permission for a change of use first, which is ridiculous.

I made a submission to our previous county development plan in Tipperary calling for rules relating to shops to be amended. People on every street in villages and towns in Ireland - not so much in the cities, but in some cities - abhor the dozens of empty clothes shops. If the owners of a shop that has been closed for perhaps ten years - I would think five -have no hope of ever getting it back in business, its use could be changed to a living unit or two. This would make a major dent in the housing lists without incurring savage change-of-use charges. Perhaps it could be done at a reasonable cost and VAT rate. The reduction could be passed on to families. If that is anathema to the Green Party and those on the hard left, who believe that nothing can be given to developers because they are pariahs who cannot be supported, then the families looking for loans to live in those units could be given a VAT reduction. We must get over these hang-ups. More and more people are becoming homeless, including those who are being made homeless by the banks we bailed out. The system is upside-down.

I have listed two simple measures that could be taken. They would allow people to move into units. This would reduce homelessness significantly. At present, 3,020 people have been approved for housing in Tipperary, never mind the 7,000 or 8,000 waiting on the lists. I received an email this evening from a man about his 70 year old mother who had been made homeless. She was told to get HAP, but she cannot get it. Every Deputy deals with situations like this one. My proposal would promote a living town centre and would provide housing. It would kill two birds with a single shot, not a double-barrelled shotgun.

It is not rocket science. I mean no disrespect to the public servants who are present, but I do not know why Departments cannot understand, deal with or finance this or why it must be so difficult that we cannot have this or that. Give the VAT back to the people who want to buy properties or do them up themselves as long-term or HAP leases or whatever and people would be living on those streets again. Only two families now live on Clonmel's main street, O'Connell Street. It is frightening at night time. For a long time, we had to deal with that planning situation because people wanted to move out to rural areas to live. That was okay, but then it was not okay and now the streets are desolate at night. They are also desolate during the day when all of the shops are closed.

It is not rocket science. We do not need gurus or people with degrees out their ears telling us what we need to do. They told us plenty before and we did much of what these experts said, but they were not to be found when the S-H-1-T hit the fan. They were not next nor near the place with their expert reports. They have gone elsewhere to consult on something else.

It depresses me to attend housing committee meetings - I mean no disrespect to any of the members, two of whom are present - and listen to all of that. This morning, officials from several county and city councils attended the committee. In fairness to Mr. Michael Walsh, who is chief executive of Waterford City and County Council and is a good country man with a good understanding of country life, he admitted that the capacity to build houses had disappeared from local authorities. It has. They had not built any themselves for 40 years, of course, but they had built thousands using good contractors whom they recognised. That stopped well before the crash, when the boom started. How can it take ten years for councils to kick into gear again? It beggars belief. No business would survive if it was out of operation for ten days, never mind ten years. Mr. Walsh said that councils now had the capacity again, thank God, albeit not to build houses themselves but to get builders, the land and everything else organised.

The Department must take a lot of the responsibility for this. It is too slow. Too many stages have to be passed and too many things are travelling up and down. People must first make a submission of interest. That goes up to the Department. That takes six months to come back down. That one is then sent back up after perhaps two months and it takes another six months to come back down. Then it goes to Sligo, Carlow or seven different places around the country.

It is the same for voluntary housing. I am a proud member of a voluntary housing association. It is small, but it built 14 houses, and then three further houses, in jig time. The local authority built in the same field and ended up with more steps than go up the floor in this Chamber. We did not have a step in the complex. We were a voluntary board of 12 lay people. The authority made a dog's dinner of the site. Its buildings are falling down. Anyone can go and see that. With all of its designers, consultants, engineers and architects, it made a dog's dinner of the site. Three builders were involved and five or six years were spent building. For three winters, the roofs were on timbers with no slates. Now, people are expected to live in those houses. The plaster slabs have fallen off the walls. Everything has happened. We are in the same field with the same terrain, same weather and same foundations, and we could do our work as voluntary lay people.

We started that in 1996. The rot and lethargy had set in then. I do not know what went wrong. There was no accountability or checks and balances. We were dealing with a voluntary group at the time. It short-circuited. There was one sub-department in the Department to deal with the voluntary sector but now it is back again with five or six groups, creating jobs for public officials. I do not know who they are serving, but they are not serving the public. It is not acceptable.

I welcomed Mr. Walsh's statement that local authorities had the capacity again, but when will they get the houses? There are many people waiting for houses in Waterford. I do not know why we cannot do this. It beggars belief in 2017. We built them when we did not have a crane or a JCB and had nothing except picks and shovels but we cannot build them now. We have builders. We cannot demonise them all. We have a lot of good, small and capable builders but they cannot get money from the banks either. The banks are a major problem. As quickly as we build houses, they and the vulture funds are dispossessing people and throwing them out.

The situation has gone badly askew from what was wanted by the people of 1916 whom we have commemorated. It has been pulled asunder by the system. The system has become too cumbersome. We must tackle it in Tipperary, Cork, Donegal and Dublin. The system is failing us. We can have all of the reports that we want. We could build houses with them, given their size and volume. We need to change the system.

I will not speak any longer. It is a Thursday evening and people have other business to discuss before we rise, but I know that I will be in the Chamber when we return in September talking about the same issue and we will not have many houses built. It saddens me that we do not have houses when all that people want is to buy a house or build their own. Some want to apply for social housing. There is nothing wrong with that either. None of that is happening. The Dáil should consider another system.

Any Bill that is examined goes through pre-legislative scrutiny.

7 o’clock

We need scrutiny afterwards because with the best will in the world, the man who never made a mistake never made anything. All of us together, collectively, can make mistakes and we need some way of looking at the legislation within six months. It should definitely not be more than a year after it is passed.

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