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

I am glad to have an opportunity to speak again on housing. I will not blackguard the Minister or be personal in my contribution. Unfortunately, the Government blames the local authorities and wrongly so. A total of €62.5 million was promised in 2015 to Kerry, not by the Minister but by his predecessor, in what was practically the same Government. The Government did not say how long it would take for all of the money to come but I can guarantee that not much of it has come yet. The Department is slowing down local authorities with too many hurdles. In Kerry, ten rural cottages are to be built between 2016 and 2021. People are providing their own sites. Councillor Johnny Healy-Rae received a reply in a notice of motion at a council meeting the other day and I also received it. People who begin to look for a rural cottage now will have to wait three years before somebody will come out to them because the funding is not there. That is wrong.

Demountable homes are all over Kerry for single farmers who finish up in a house that is not good enough to live in but we cannot get any more of them. The Taoiseach did not know what I was speaking about when I mentioned demountable homes.

The Government will not allow the local authority to zone enough land, and what is happening is that one piece of land is developed and that developer has the monopoly to charge what he or she likes for the houses built on it. There should be competition. Zoning does not really matter. The planning authority can decide how many houses will be granted but it is wrong to grant them all on one side of a town and to allow one developer to have a monopoly.

With regard to the tenant purchase scheme, which was parked for a number of years, many people who have paid rent for their houses for 30 or 40 years are not allowed to buy them just because they are on a pension. That is very unfair after they have paid rent for 30 or 40 years. They have the savings but they are not being allowed to buy the houses because they are on social welfare and someone has to be working to qualify for the tenant purchase scheme.

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