Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am very glad of the opportunity to speak on the Land Development Agency Bill 2021. This is terribly important work. It is also terribly important that we strike a balance. On a personal basis, Deputy Boyd Barrett knows that I like him as a person, and he always cheers me up when we meet each other, but I have to say I would hate to rely on him to build even a henhouse. If we were relying on him, the henhouse would never get built. I do not like to personalise but while a lot of what Deputy Boyd Barrett has said is correct and right, we cannot have the demonising in this House of the whole public-private issue as if there is something wrong with developers, those who want to build housing and those who want to work in that sector because that is not the case.

What I dearly want to see for our publicly-owned land is that, in as big a way as possible, the Government, the Department and local authorities would build affordable housing to try to address the massive housing need we have.

I attended a very important meeting yesterday where projected statistics for the whole population for the next 12 months, two years, three years and ten years were looked at very closely and analysed. When I studied this to understand it and get it into my head the enormity of the problem facing us, I have to be honest that the projected need for housing frightened me.

I do not doubt that Deputy Boyd Barrett is 100% passionate about what he is saying. He is right in his own mind about what he is saying but it seems to be all anti private involvement in anything and that we should be doing it. The message I have is that we are incapable of doing it. I would love if we were able to do it. I would be so proud. I am not blaming the Minister, as he knows, when I say this. It does not matter if it was this Minister in this Government, the previous Government, the one before that, or the Government of ten or 20 years ago. We must have public and private working together.

Deputy Boyd Barrett is right about certain things but it must be remembered that people have to make a profit. There has to be a profit margin made in anything a person does in life. If you buy a cow and want to keep it for 12 months, the cow has to have a calf, must produce milk and you have to make money, even if it is a marginal amount because there are costs to be met. It is the same for employers who are involved in delivering housing. They have to provide the housing and it has to be sold at an affordable price. I could not agree more. When I see the exorbitant prices of property and the enormous rents being charged in certain parts of the country, my goodness, we have to do something to try to rein this in and bring control to the situation.

Does the Deputy realise what is happening tomorrow? Does he know about tomorrow? Maybe he would not mind too much about it. Timber prices are going up 10%, 15% and 17% tomorrow. Does the Deputy realise that in the past 12 months alone, the prices of steel and timber have gone up enormously? One cannot pull that money out of the sky. It is not Monopoly money; it is real money. This is what is affecting the price of housing so detrimentally, whether it is in the private market, the public market or whatever market. That is the reality. The costs of one metre of concrete and concrete blocks have gone up, as has the price of steel. Does the Deputy realise that?

These are the considerations we must take on board in a practical and common-sense way, rather than demonising all the time and shout about there being absolutely no private involvement and about not letting these people come in on our land. I would love to see that happening and I would love it if we could do it all ourselves, but we cannot. We must work together and try to ensure that, at the end of the day, we are providing the maximum amount of properties, available at affordable money to our young families to get them off the housing waiting lists. Every day of the week, I deal with the housing list in Kerry. I would dearly like to see our local authority starting to build single rural cottages, schemes of houses like it used to do long ago when John O'Donoghue from Farranfore would go into a field on behalf of the council and set out a housing development, and then go in to build five, ten, 20, 30, 40 or 60 houses. Was that not great work? There is not enough of that happening now. We must ensure that if we cannot do it ourselves, we bring brains, skill and ability together in conjunction and to partner up, to try to ensure we provide the housing one way or another in the best and most affordable way we can.

We have had excellent people working in our local authority in Kerry over the years. It is not that we do not have the people now - we do - but we must pool our resources. Rather than criticising the Minister in this House and saying, "Damnation on you and all that is there with you", it should be the exact opposite. We should be saying to the Minister that there is a very serious problem with housing in this country. Rather than the Opposition knocking that and fighting about it, we should be asking how can we collectively put our shoulders to the wheel and work together to ensure the money is made available and we can do this in an affordable way. There seems, however, to be very little we can do about the massive increases in the costs of raw materials. It is a worldwide issue at the moment. The prices for materials have gone up dramatically in the last 12 months. This is a massive problem.

There is a responsibility on every one of us to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Minister and the Department, not knocking but working together in trying to address the problem. We must use our imaginations and the brains that God gave us to try to work together in a positive way to address the issue.

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