Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to contribute to the debate. I am a former board member of Caisleán Nua Voluntary Housing Association and one of the instigators of a voluntary group of laypeople who set up a wonderful organisation because of an horrendous attack on a vulnerable person. We held a community alert meeting in a full hall. As ever, until there is trouble and everything is fine, nobody attends. A wonderful vision emerged from the meeting. A board was set up and delivered 14 social housing units. It might not have been hundreds or even dozens but there were 14 in the small village of Caisleán Nua na Siuire, Tiobraid Árann theas. I salute the board members and volunteers, many of whom were, and remain, much older than I am. Some of them are now in their 80s. They did a gallant job, without professionals on the board. I thank the housing officer on the county council at the time, Mr. John O'Mahony, who has since retired, and Mr. Donal McManus from the Irish Council of Social Housing, ICSH, for the advice and support we received.

The matter is a patchwork, like a quilt. Does the Minister of State know the song, "Forty Shades of Green", which referred to a blanket one's mother might make? He is trying to introduce catch-all legislation. Small bodies do an excellent job, while some of the larger ones also do a good job. The issue has changed so much. I spent many years on the board of the ICSH and I met people such as the chairman, a lovely man whose name eludes me. The ICSH did much work in Dublin, while many small groups did work throughout the country. Ní neart go cur le chéile. The approach should be of the people, by the people, for the people. We built 14 houses on the site in question and went on to build a further three special needs ones afterwards. We built them in a field we procured from the county council. There was not a step in the entire complex. It was all level access. The county council built houses in the same field, on the other side of it, with 11 or 12 bad steps up to the houses. Some of the steps are nearly as bad as those in the Chamber. The houses took five or six years to be built and were left unfinished for three winters. We built ours in 14 months, from start to finish, without a professional on the board. We hired in expertise, including an engineer and architect, Liam Long. We received great support from the council at the time. My point is that it can be done with a sense of meitheal and doing something for ourselves. Completing the project was one of my proudest moments in public life. I have been involved since 1986 in the community alert group, the second to be set up in the country, and it was one of the most satisfactory outcomes. The next conference will be held in County Wexford in two weeks and I hope to attend.

After a while, larger groups started to become involved, with more muscle power, and the dynamic of the board of the ICSH changed. The larger groups, with many different names, came in from abroad and so on, and were welcomed. Nevertheless, I saw an imbalance when they joined the sector. One of the groups was set up by famous brothers. There were Respond, Clúid, Foscadh and - you name it - there is a plethora of them now. They need regulations, as do all groups, including our community alert group, but regulation has gone bananas. Two more schemes would have been built by our group, Caisleán Nua, were it not for the regulation. We now spend more time on compliance than we do talking about the needs of the people and further projects. It overburdens people. It is like everything else in this country: an overarching reach of Departments and regulations. While some of the regulation is necessary, and accountability rightly ensures that every penny has to be accounted for, we were accounting and there was no waste.

I outlined earlier the time it took us to build the project and that it took the council six years to build its dog's dinner of a project, in comparison with ours, in the same field. We had no architects or anyone else on board. We were only laypeople but we hired others in. We received the capital assistance scheme funding and were delighted to do so. We kept within budget because we had no choice. There is too much regulation, with a catch-all effect, and we will have to go back to the drawing board and ease up in that regard. The process was streamlined around the time we completed the project, in 1996, and approximately seven sections of the then Department of the Environment and Local Government were dealing with the issue throughout the country. Approximately three or four years later, following much lobbying from the ICSH and others, the number of offices and various other places one had to contact was cut to two. Gradually, however, during the recession and so on, mandarins put their hands on the matter again and there are now four or five places one must contact. There is no need for it. Such places do not help, much of the time, but make the process more difficult. We must support and salute the vision of the late Canon Hayes, who said it was better to light a candle than curse the dark, and his spirit of helping one another, through the ESB, rural electrification and everything else. We must support groups and not smother them with regulation and so on. We must be sure they are supported and helped, and lift the cloak of regulation that has come down on top of them.

I fundamentally disagree with Deputy Boyd Barrett. We have no problems on our estate, where there is a caretaker who looks after any problems that arise. Nobody has any bother approaching our board, of which I am now vice-chairman, while Mr. Tom Lonergan is chairperson. I salute the board members. The Minister of State mentioned the growth in the sector, which is phenomenal. The sector can resolve the issue. I do not refer to launches, Rebuilding Ireland and all the other measures he outlined such as big reports with nothing happening and nothing having been built. There is not even a hen house in Toomevara or a dog's kennel in Carrick-on-Suir. Tipperary County Council has an appalling record of building houses in recent years. The voluntary sector can do it and will do it. It is willing, fit and able to do it but needs to be allowed, without being stifled by unnecessary, overarching regulations and rules.

The matter was one of my passions when I was involved in it. There is energy in the sector to do more but it is utterly over-regulated, which is disappointing, as the Minister of State must know. It is not a criticism of the officials accompanying the Minister of State but there are too many units in the Department that one must go through. That is too much and we are killing the initiative of ordinary people. It happens in the case of all clubs and communities because there is regulation after regulation but they do not give us a better society. The Government should let the people who want to do it, that is, the leaders and visionaries who want to put the houses in place, build for themselves and not stifle them.

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