Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan. This is an important Bill and I echo what my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, said. It is very easy to get emotional and bang the drum for rural Ireland, but in reality if one reads through the Bill one will find it is one of the most effective pieces of legislation to enable people to come back and live once again in rural Ireland.

I come from County Longford, one of five or six counties that have a unique housing problem in that there is not so much an affordability issue in our county but rather a sustainable building problem. In Longford and other similar counties the problem is that the average mean price of a house is still less than what it costs to build a house. For the past 11 years we have looked on aimlessly and hopelessly as houses were being built across the country, while it was not commercially viable to build a house in Longford.

Now, thankfully, through the serviced site fund or shared equity scheme we finally have an opportunity to give first-time buyers in my county a real chance to get on the property ladder. It is an extraordinary statistic that it has been 11 years since a three-bedroom semi-detached house has been built in County Longford. That is probably indicative of the Bill in that this is the first piece of legislation in 11 years that will give hard-pressed young couples and families an opportunity to get on the property ladder.

I am proud of the Bill. It was a key plank in the programme for Government. The Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, have worked tirelessly on this, as have departmental staff. I am pleased to see it advanced to this stage. I look forward to local authorities like those in Longford being invited to issue their expressions of interest and finally start breaking ground once again on affordable houses in County Longford.

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