Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have an opportunity to speak tonight. I want to issue my comhghairdeachas to the new Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, and the Minister of State with responsibility for heritage, Deputy Malcolm Noonan, who is from Kilkenny in the south east, where I am from. I wish both the Minister and Minister of State all the best. I worked with the Minister when he was a member of the housing committee. Some people have criticised me for my attendance at that committee. If words and paper could build houses, no one in this country would be homeless. That was my experience of the committee and I became pure frustrated with it.

We need real action. Members of my family were among the founding members of the Fianna Fáil Party, which has a history of building houses, especially local authority houses. I hope the party has the say on housing in this Government. The Minister with responsibility for housing is a member of the party and I wish him well in that regard as I know he is capable. Fianna Fáil must build ordinary local authority housing for ordinary people. It must build schemes as it did in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 2000s. People travelled in the backs of lorries and had no equipment. They dug foundations by hand. Now we have cranes, equipment and earth moving machinery and we still cannot build homes.

Planning is a disaster. I hope the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, will not make matters worse. He has a track record of objecting to planning applications for forestry felling licences and to many other planning applications. Green Party members are top class at objecting. They are serial objectors and we do not need those. We must have balance and good planning laws but we do not have either.

Deputy Michael Collins mentioned this issue. Deputy Danny Healy-Rae, who was here earlier, is always talking about the rural cottage. Councils always built rural homes but they are no longer building them. Deputy Alan Kelly was the Minister with responsibility for housing for several years. There have been more housing Ministers than I have had hot dinners but we cannot build houses.

Planning has a major role to play. I spoke to the Minister earlier about a planning case in my town of Cahir in County Tipperary. There is a lovely family and community in the area in question. They built their own homes, which are private houses. They are not snobs and it is not a case of NIMBY. The county development plan is about to expire and a new one is to be developed. A planning permission for a large number of houses was granted by An Bord Pleanála with many conditions and expires on 29 July. Last Saturday, cowboy builders arrived on the scene before anyone got up. They continued to build on the site despite a warning notice being issued by the county council. No commencement notice was sent in to the building control authority either. The county council officials are aware of the matter and have issued notices but that is not good enough. These people want to plough on and this evening they dug foundations for houses right up on top of other sites for which An Bord Pleanála had denied permission to build. This land is deemed to be dezoned in the new plan because there is too much land zoned in Cahir. These people want others to get affordable, local authority and private houses but they want to be consulted and respected.

Above all, we cannot allow the planning laws of the land to be flouted by this company, which is apparently from this town and in which celebrities are supposedly involved. It cannot ride roughshod over the planning laws and especially over the people. I stand with those people who have housed themselves and their families. All they want is that the same law is applied to developers as is applied to individuals. If someone built an extension or a downstairs bathroom for a disabled person or someone who had a stroke without issuing a commencement notice, adhering to planning requirements or within weeks of a planning permission expiring, that person would be stopped in his tracks by the council. This company seems to think it is all-powerful and can ride roughshod. It broke every health and safety law in the book last Saturday morning. I called to the site and there was not one sign, yellow jacket or hard hat in sight. They had a hard mix alright and they disrespected the people. An Garda Síochána had to be called.

I want Tipperary County Council to go to the courts if necessary. One might as well send a copy of The Irish Timesor another newspaper as send a warning notice because the company does not respect warning notices. This is the culture that has grown up around some of the big developers. I know some very good developers who build houses and want to be unshackled and allowed to build. This kind of carry-on by rogue developers and landowners cannot be allowed to continue in 2020. Rogue landowners want to sell their land in a slipshod way without plans for crèches or community facilities. We wanted to build a scouts hall back in the day when the planning was done first. The previous owners did a good job and talked to people. We want engagement with people, from whatever communities they come. Ní neart go cur le chéile. We want good will and support. We want people to live in harmony, whether they live in private, social or affordable homes.

We need to get a building campaign going for social housing. The Government must give the county councils money. Councils will send a report to the Department which will be sent back six months later. They will then send it up to the Department again six months after that and it then goes up and down again. Instead of building homes, we have paper being pushed around the country.

The banks are not functioning. What sickens me altogether is that I have at least 20 farm families in Tipperary on my books where the son or daughter is helping the farmer and wants to get married. These people have the money and wherewithal to build their own houses but they cannot get planning permission. It is bizarre. Rural Ireland is being denuded of its population. It must be allowed to thrive. We must have living towns and villages. We cannot herd everyone into Dublin and Cork where all the menaces are. There will be no one in the west. We used to sing that the west was awake but the west has been forgotten and written off. It has been cut off into the Atlantic. We must have supports for ordinary people. The Government should build houses for the people who want them.

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