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

These people have an idea that rural Ireland is a burden on the State. They complained about 500,000 one-off houses being built around the country. I want to say to those people that all those houses had to go through the rigorous planning process before planning permission was granted. They had to comply with site assessment and septic tank requirements. They could not be obtrusive in terms of the countryside, they had to have the required sight distance going out on roads, and, by and large, they had to be connected to the area in which they wanted to build. Those people did nothing wrong when they put a roof over their own heads. If the Government is proposing to stop people doing that, there will be crowds outside the gate of these Houses. They have been there in the past but there will be a bigger crowd outside the gate if it tries to do something like that to people who are not doing any harm.

There is a lot of talk here about the need for local authorities to build houses for homeless people. That has to be done in certain cases, but where people can and want to build a house in which to bring up their families the way they want to and not have to experience the social problems they may experience if they were in more built-up areas, I cannot see anything wrong with that. These people are saying there will have to be a financial need for them to be allowed build a house in a rural area. That is totally wrong and is the height of blackguarding because most people in rural Ireland are trying to live the best way they can off their bit of land, but they have to travel to work and I do not see anything wrong with that.

They are saying that these people are costing the State in terms of infrastructure. Most of them have their own septic tanks and no one should tell me that the roads have to be maintained for them. Those are the same roads used since the time of the horse and carts in the 1800s. We battled to get them resurfaced, so surely they are entitled to that. What about the urban cost? There is no talk about that. All we hear is the burden rural Ireland is on the State. Dublin has trains, buses, the DART, the Luas, the metro, and another terminal built in Dublin Airport, yet one would get lonely in Shannon Airport now.

See this speech in context