Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Ó Broin for introducing this motion. It is refreshing for a change to be talking about an issue that came up on the doorsteps and in the House during the general election campaign instead of Covid-19.

I congratulate the new Aire and wish him the very best of luck. If I can give him one small piece of advice, it is that he should take on board the constructive suggestions that come from the House. It should not be about opposition and government. The Dáil should not be treated as a dunce. Good ideas do come from here. They came from the Opposition benches during the last Dáil. Some of those ideas were implemented over recent weeks because of the Covid crisis. Ministers were told that they could not be implemented and that the Constitution would not allow it, yet we could find a solution when there was a need. I urge the Minister to steer away from the temptation that will be whispered into his ear to shoehorn through a particular proposal on the basis that the Government has a majority. He should take on board the good ideas. They may be amended and altered and we may not agree with the amendments and alterations but the Parliament should be used as a vehicle to bring about change, not just to rubber-stamp proposals coming from the Government.

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The problem of affordable housing is complex and there is no single measure that can promise a comprehensive solution. There are certain risks with some proposals and there will be unintended consequences but we must take those risks in the interests of the thousands of families across the country that do not own their own home or do not have a roof over their heads tonight.

If we are going to deal with the challenges of housing in our cities, in particular in Dublin, as well as the challenges of congestion, we must recognise that we cannot just keep building houses in Dublin to solve our problem. We need to bring about regional balance, so as well as building housing in high-demand areas, we must take other immediate steps, including bringing families into new communities where the taxpayer has already paid for infrastructure such as schools, roads, water and sewerage treatment facilities. Infrastructure like schools is already in place in many parts of our country but we still have a problem in locations because of depopulation. We need to address that imbalance.

The Minister's Department deals with housing and every serviced site in this country costs that Department an average of €30,714 arising from infrastructure that has been put in place. It is not just about the serviced site on its own but it is about putting the infrastructure in place right across the country. If we can get somebody to move out of an urban area, which has a high demand for housing, into a vacant home, it would in itself save the Exchequer more than €30,000 while leaving one fewer serviced site required.

In the current housing crisis one of our key actions must be to maximise the use of our existing housing stock. There are 1.75 million houses in this country and a conservative estimate sees approximately 50,000 of them vacant at any one time. Some of these are in areas of high demand but some are in regional locations, including my constituency. We need to target those regional vacant homes immediately. As I stated, it is costing the Minister's Department more than €30,000 to put a serviced site in place in this country. We should introduce a regional home regeneration grant. If a first-time buyer purchases an existing property in a town or village with a significant residential vacancy rate, that buyer should be eligible for a grant of €15,000 that could be offset against mortgage deposit requirements.

I am thankful we are putting major investment into broadband infrastructure after a long struggle within previous Governments and this will transform the country both in urban and rural areas. Major investment is being put in place and as a basic and standard offering across rural Ireland, 500 Mbps broadband will be available to rural homes from the end of this year. We need to encourage people to move out of our cities and utilise this infrastructure.

The big difficulty in my constituency and many other parts of regional and rural Ireland is that people are commuting long distances to work. People in my constituency must travel long distances and they are commuting to Dublin, Galway and Sligo to obtain employment. There will be major benefits to the economy, society and our environment if we can get people to work remotely.

I know that until now it was like banging one's head on a brick wall to speak about remote working. I am thankful that Covid-19 has changed that attitude. As well as bringing life into communities where there has been a drop in population, remote working would take pressure from existing infrastructure in our urban areas and use existing infrastructure, including housing, roads and schools in many provincial or rural locations. It is important to really consider this now. If we encouraged one person in rural Ireland to reduce his or her weekly car travel by up to 300 km per week, it would diminish carbon emissions by 1.7 tonnes per annum.

If we are to do this, the Government must take the lead and set a target within the public sector that within the next 18 months, 30% of all staff would work remotely. If the public sector and the Government leads by example, others will follow. We must develop a policy right across society, not just to deal with Covid-19 but to deal with the environmental challenges arising from commuting, regional imbalance and congestion and housing issues, particularly in this city. We must develop a remote-first policy.

This means that when meetings take place in Dublin, whether in Leinster House or any other business in the city, people sit down in front of a computer screen. They may be speaking to two or three colleagues across the table but they may also be speaking remotely to two or three more colleagues. A simple remote-first policy would allow people to work far more constructively from rural areas and regional locations. It is a mindset change that must happen. We are now moving from a position of working remotely in a complete way to some type of hybrid system but we cannot allow this to go back to how things were.

It is imperative that we start with a remote-first policy. It makes far more sense to try to encourage people to think about moving to a rural locations. We will not get people who were born, bred and reared in Dublin to move to rural Ireland. However, in my constituency of Roscommon-Galway, we have the highest third level participation rate in the country but we have the lowest level of graduate employees working within that constituency. If we can get a proportion of those people who are from east Galway or County Roscommon and who are working in different parts of Ireland or the globe to come back and work from a remote site in my constituency, where some parts have issues with depopulation, there would be a major benefit for everyone. We must change our thinking and attitude in how we work and have worked to date.

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