Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I ask that the Minister of State comment on the matter in his response. If a council intends to purchase a house where people live, I assume they are not allowed to stay in the house. Where do they go? They receive a letter to tell them they must leave. It has happened numerous times in my constituency. I will search the archives for letters related to the matter. I am not raising something that is not a fact on the ground in my area. It makes common sense to me that if a house with someone living in it is purchased, he or she can be either left to remain or evicted.

I return to the issue of rural resettlement programmes. Whether it is in Rosscarbery, Goleen, Allihies, Ballinspittle, it does not matter. The bottom line is there are many vacant properties in towns and many vacant rooms above shops. There should be an incentive for the owners of such properties to make them available. It does not matter what country the people are from, whether they are Irish or some other nationality, but if there is a potential home for them, it should be explored. It could remove many of the thousands of homeless people from the crisis they face. They would be able to live in a local rural community where there are plenty of spaces in the schools, and fabulous playgrounds and community spaces, instead of sleeping rough or being piled into a hotel room in difficult circumstances that should not be accepted. It is just one measure that should be more seriously examined. It was discussed at great length when creating the programme for Government but it has not been worked on since the formation of the Government. The Government showed interest in it but did not follow through on it.

Another difficulty is that people who want a loan to start off their life with their own home cannot secure one. They are in a trap. Banks will not give them a loan because their earnings might not be the best and many of them pay rent in any event. Unfortunately, not all the schemes the Government has introduced to enable people to secure loans have been very successful. Some of the schemes have been successful but more have not. It is very difficult for many families and puts them into the social housing bracket. Many such families do not want to be in that position but are forced into a corner and cannot secure a loan from the banks. The banks have been tough. They have evicted people and have been tough on them at the most difficult time in their lives. Every day I speak to people who face losing their home. Nothing could be worse than to think that after one has set up one's home with one's partner or children, one is undergoing difficult circumstances but is being played. Circumstances are being made very difficult for people. They are being brought close to the edge, perhaps over the edge in many cases. The Government needs to have a stronger voice against the banks and stand up to them. It needs to tell them that what they are doing is not acceptable. There are ways and means of stopping such tactics being used against ordinary people.

While we often speak about social housing, nobody is ever worried about social housing on the islands, where there is often little or none. Island life is dying. There are eight islands off the coast of west County Cork but I do not know when funding was last made available for social housing on them, whether on Bere Island, Whiddy Island, Long Island, Cape Clear Island, Sherkin Island or any of the others. People are crying out for social housing on the islands but cannot get it and are being forced to the mainland for housing. Residents have a vision of a future in rural Ireland and want to live there, including on the islands, because there is a great way of life there but the supports to allow them to live there are not provided. It would be another way to take the pressure off the cities and larger towns, which are under great pressure.

We must also examine county development plans which, in my constituency, allow ten additional houses in a rural town and village. That is perfectly natural and in some cases, the allowance might be for 50 or even 100 houses. Let us take Ballinspittle in my constituency as an example. A number of additional houses will be allowed in the lifetime of the plan, which is approximately five years. It is good because Ballinspittle is close to Cork and has great potential. There is an issue with the sewerage facilities, however, and the houses cannot be built. A does not talk to B, from what I can gather. There is no point in having someone drawing up a plan and spending all those hours. Another is probably being drawn up but it is fantasy land.

It is wasting the time of councillors and officials. In a town like Ballinspittle, a very simple solution has been proposed and it could resolve the issue but it has not even been examined. The proposed solution would not cost an arm and a leg and it could be replicated throughout west Cork. There are small towns and villages that want to grow and bring people back to the town in order to save the existing facilities but there is no aid from the Government to do it.

We really are lacking the vision to go forward. We are contemplating the purchase of more land and houses, as well as building more houses, but there will never be an end to this. The people who want planning permission to build in their home areas cannot get the loans to allow them to get their lives together. We have been aiding and abetting this process instead of tackling the problem. There is crisis in rural planning permission applications. Young people are finding it increasingly difficult to get approval for planning permission and if people get a job in a small town or village and want to build, they are told they need to be there for seven years before doing so. They cannot establish themselves in the area. It is the same story for people who have spent all their lives in an area; if the authorities can find any excuse to prevent planning permission, they will do everything in their power to bring that about. These couples or individuals are being forced towards social housing.

What else can they do? The list of 10,000 people will stay at 10,000 next year and in the years that follow. The figure will probably grow; it certainly will not decrease. We will not be able to sustain the building of houses. We must look at what is there already. I stated earlier that there is ample housing in rural towns and villages and that is what we must look to in order to resolve the problem. I accept that this approach will not solve the problem completely. I am not as foolish as to say that. It will certainly knock many people of the list that the Government has been trying to defend over a number of years. I saw a school shutting in Goleen and post offices closing in Ballineen and Allihies recently. I could speak about them all night. A credit union in Drimoleague and a butcher shop in Ballinspittle have also closed, along with a shop in Kilbrittain. There are plenty of examples in the bigger towns as well. Those towns are not avoiding the chop either. There is no vision to repopulate these places.

This vision could have been developed during the discussions that led up to the formation of the Government if Fine Gael had worked with people who have done this already in County Clare and other places. They were hungry to make a success of this. Mistakes might have been made along the way and we might not have housed 10,000 people; we might have housed 3,000 or 4,000. We could have given people back their lives, their dignity and respect. We have little or no respect for the people on the street. I will meet them when I walk along the street tonight in Rathmines. They want €5 for food or €9 for the Internet café. It is the same story in my county of Cork. They will come from everywhere to my constituency clinics in Cork South-West. They will come from the more populated areas of Clonakilty, Bandon, Skibbereen and Castletownbere in particular. It is the same story of people sleeping in a camper van or car because they cannot get on a social housing list, or if they can, they have been on it for years. There is a plethora of issues and we are inundated with them.

We are trying our best to resolve this issue. We work very closely with the council and to the best of our ability so people can be rehoused. I do not like naming people but there is a Mr. Healy in west Cork who has done tremendous work to help those who are homeless. He is a saint in his own right. Although I should not name individuals, he works very hard and he has been so good to people in dreadful circumstances. I pity those people because I am human. I assume the Minister of State is the same. We would like to resolve these problems.

The Government has not tackled this issue properly. It should approach it from several angles rather than just one, which the Government is doing in planning for and building houses while nothing is really happening on the ground. The Minister of State might indicate that will happen next year and he should please tell me if it will. The Government should have looked at rural resettlement, as those towns and villages would have taken thousands of people right through the country. It was an awful mistake not to do this. There was an interest in this while the programme for Government was being negotiated but I did not join the Government because I did not think Fine Gael was genuine. I was right. This is one of my highest priorities and while one Minister may have shown interest, others were not. I am not pointing a finger at the Minister of State but the reason for this lack of interest was that there was not much rural blood in the Government. That is still the case. The Government still has an opportunity to act, although we are in the dying hours of its time in office. Most people accept that. There is still a chance to turn this around. I would like the Minister of State to be around the Cabinet table looking at the opportunity and seeing if rural resettlement is an option. It is certainly a way of helping to alleviate the current crisis.

There must be close examination of legislation to help young people looking for planning permission to build. Why is the Government making it so difficult? People cannot get loans and they are on bended knee because they do not want to look for social housing. I accept not everybody is like that. They are getting no assistance from banks and the planning decisions in this country are questionable. A couple came to me recently in my constituency office who put their financial position before me. They had no alternative only to go on the social housing list despite not wanting a council house. They wanted to see if it was possible for them to get a loan from the bank to buy a house. I am no expert but I knew they could not do it. They wanted to see if they could buy a site and build but because of the current position with banks, they were unable to do so and sort out their future. This is what we should have been doing from the word "go" and not just in the years since I was elected. This is something that should have been seen coming down the line. We should have known we would be in a position where hundreds or thousands of people face homelessness.

The Government has left this unfortunate situation spiral out of control. Unfortunately, we are where we are. Nothing the Government has tried to date has worked as the numbers have stayed the same. The difficulty I have is to try to help people in my constituency. I have no problem with anybody following me on Friday when I will have ten clinics from Kinsale to Castletownbere, taking in Clonakilty, Bandon, Skibbereen, Bantry and Schull. It does not matter where it because I am guaranteed that 50% of my time will be spent on housing, trying to see if I can resolve people's problems. These people are eight or ten years on housing lists and at the end of their tether.

In the eight years that Fine Gael has been in government, the housing crisis and homelessness has reaching an alarming level. Little to nothing has been done in real terms to improve this position.

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