Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am also glad to be able to address these amendments. There is an ideological argument here about parties on the left and on the right. The sad part about all this, however, is that there is a logjam in the delivery of housing. Many parties have been involved. When the Labour Party was in government, Deputy Kelly was the Minister responsible and he promised us more houses. I told him then that he would not build a henhouse from Toomevara to Carrick-on-Suir, and he did not. We must get real here. I am not in favour of the Land Development Agency because we have had a bad experience with these big agencies. We previously had the National Roads Authority, NRA, for instance, which is now Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII. It is now necessary almost to get permission to pick a blackberry briar away from a sign. It is just not possible to do it because these agencies are a law unto themselves. I said many times, when Fred Barry was there, that we were able to decommission the IRA but we could not decommission the NRA. Now, we have TII. It is just impossible.

We also have the new Office of the Planning Regulator. Why do we need that? It is another person with a great deal of experience in planning, that is true. I am sure he has an office in Dublin and perhaps a regional one as well, with brass plates on the door, fancy furniture and a team around him. Our group of rural Independents will not meet him, but he wants to make himself feel relevant. Big is not better, and an example of that is Irish Water. When we had the group water schemes, the good men and women and council workers dug out those schemes with picks and shovels. I remember going to help them out myself when I was a young man with a JCB, and such a machine was alien to them. They were doing their work with picks and shovels and sweated blood to do it. Now we have Irish Water, which does not even know where the towns are, let alone the pipes.

We must get rid of the existing logjams in this regard. I worked with the Minister when we were in opposition and I have some faith in him. We have all these agencies to get development, but it is not happening. I was a board member of the Irish Council for Social Housing, ICSH, for about ten years. I was also the chair of a voluntary housing scheme and we built 17 houses. We had a lovely team of volunteers and we built those houses. It took the county council six years to build the same number of houses in the same field. We built our houses in 15 months and we were told it could not be done. There was not a professional person among us and we had to hire in any expertise. We did have common sense, however. The council houses were built with 11, 12 or 13 steps going up to them. It is scandalous. The houses we built were in the same field and do not have a step going up to them. We have a flat complex.

Therefore, there are many issues. I refer to bad management, inadequate training of senior officials in the council, reports and applications concerning building houses go up and come back down and six months later they go up again and the merry-go-round continues. One application had to go to seven different offices throughout the country.

Turning to the issue of planning and rezoning, there is talk about having landbanks. Perhaps it is fine for the cities but not for the rural areas. People who want to build their own houses in rural Ireland are not being allowed to do so. In addition, we have An Taisce, which is a prescribed body. I ask the Minister to please derail, debunk and defund that body. It has outlived its usefulness and it is a hindrance to people building houses now. We had a meeting with the organisation, which was limited to an hour, unfortunately. Our group was waiting for ages. We want a follow-up meeting but we cannot get it. An Taisce is just a menace.

I spoke to the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, about Knocklofty House and hotel this evening. It is a wonderful period house which is being ravaged and plundered and An Taisce does not even want to know about it. Yet that body wants to stop people building houses in rural areas. It also wants to stop, for ideological reasons, a wonderful cheese plant from being built in Kilkenny because that facility got planning permission, approval from an Bord Pleanála and an emissions licence from the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA. An Taisce, though, is taking a court case in regard to the facility, and it is doing that with taxpayers' money. This would not happen in an asylum. The taxpayers are funding An Taisce to the tune of €6 million each year. The organisation states that it does not use those funds for legal cases and that it gets all its barristers to work pro bono. I do not know many barristers who work pro bono. I have not met many of them anyway, so I doubt if they take cases to the High Court on that basis. This is a rotten, stinking racket and it should be stopped. These people must be removed from the equation and people should be allowed to build their own houses, within reasonable guidelines.

Moving on to zoning, and dezoning and the famous regulator, the Cahir town area plan was passed in recent months. The residents of Mountain View Drive fought against it. They have now been told that 60 ha of zoned land has gone down to 10 ha. Hey presto, the council is coming along now. I want social housing and council houses because we have a housing list as long as your arm in Tipperary, with 3,500 people on it. Along with some farmers and landowners, I had been trying to get planning permission for a small development, a cluster of houses, a nursing home scheme and a retirement village, but the answer was "No". Nothing could happen unless Mountain View Drive had a new road. That stipulation had been in a development plan, but now it has been removed. The council has now stated it wants to build 43 under Part 8 on what are now playing pitches and a green area in a housing estate which is already densely populated. Who is making these decisions? There is a public meeting tomorrow night which I must attend and I have been invited to it. The people are up in arms. They made submissions to keep this green area and now the council is going to build on it, after it has dezoned 50 ha in the rest of the town.

Turning to An Bord Pleanála, I have a problem regarding masts for 5G. Planning applications were submitted for one in Gortnahoe and another in New Inn, and there have been 120 and 86 objections respectively. I refer to building on top of a person's home. There is already an Eircom mast where the family of the late Jack Moloney gave the site free of choice, and the same happened in Gortnahoe, to the forerunner of Eircom, the old Department of Posts and Telegraphs, to get telephone lines to people. They were great people. Now, however, poles with masts on them have been put up. The company wants to erect masts that are 25 m and 30 m high to put all the antennas it wants on them. The council will probably refuse permission in this regard, and many such applications have been refused around the country.

I am told by activists, however, that 80% of those refusals of planning permission are being overturned by An Bord Pleanála. Does it care about the health of people, the visual intrusion, the Tidy Towns competition and the aesthetics? The proposed mast in New Inn is near four listed properties. I have again contacted An Taisce. We must remember these requests for planning permission must, by statute, be sent to An Taisce. The body was told about this matter via correspondence and the response was to offer thanks for being made aware of the situation. It was not interested, though, in people's livelihoods or health or in small villages and communities. It is interested in the nice dandy stuff, though, such as stopping factories and having all these meetings on ecology and climate change. This is scandalous blackguarding. I wish the Minister well, but none of these plans are going to happen unless he takes out all these logjams. He must get rid of them.

It is necessary to deal with TII to come out from a site onto a regional road, for example. I told the Minister that we decommissioned the IRA. I refer to the work of the late Fr. Alex Reid, Dr. Martin Mansergh, Bertie Ahern and others in that regard. We are left though with the NRA, which is now the TII. These are just self-empowered people who are answerable to no one. They are not accountable to this House, to the county councils or to anyone. By hell, we are not to question them. Those people are above that. They are like the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, that we have now, in that they are untouchable. We have really undermined our democracy and vested power in these people. They should not have it.

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