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

We have been talking about housing since I got here in 2016. Unfortunately, we have gone from one housing crisis to another. I know now why there is a crisis in housing. It is because of the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil parties. They are backed up now by their buddies in the Greens. They are the cause of the problem and the nightmare. Young people in rural Ireland want to build on their own farms and in their own communities. They are being refused continuously by a planning system, regulations and the 2040 plan. Our group did our best here last week to try to see if we could turn that 2040 plan into a document on which we could have at least a little consultation and discussion in order that young people would be allowed planning permission in their own areas. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens all voted one way and that was to make sure to heap more misery and difficulty on those people. As if there were not enough regulation, the Government parties have their buddies in An Taisce just in case you get past the post. An Taisce gets over €3 million a year from the State. We have looked at all the Departments that were handing out money to An Taisce left, right and centre. Nobody is questioning why every other organisation in the country does not get money. This is an organisation that certain political parties want to have in our system to make life more difficult for people who want to get housing.

We blame the development plans, and I urge Cork County Council to be very careful in supporting its county development plan if parts of it involve the 2040 plan that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have put into these county development plans. If it does, and if it means young people cannot get planning permission in their own communities, the council should absolutely reject it and be proud to do so. We are looking at dezoning and a situation in which if people are lucky and fortunate enough to get planning permission, there is then the issue that the banks will not give them the money. We have a massive housing crisis, whether you are building one or whether you cannot get to live in one. Today we were told that despite being promised that there would be 80 timber felling licences a week, we are down to 40. We have a crisis of the highest order and it is led by the Green Party and then Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael backing them up. Something has to give here. The country is starting to overheat and these parties are lying idly by. They are costing young people their homes and their lives. They cannot just start off in life like everybody else once did. Many of these politicians have their own homes and there was nobody standing before them refusing them when they bought or built them.

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