Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have been in building all my life. I support this amendment. To get down to brass tacks, what the Minister has done shows complete disregard for people in rural areas. I have lived in a rural area all my life and I hope to live there for the rest of my life.

If we take the price of a serviced site in a city and apply that to a serviced site in a county, to make it profitable for construction last year, a serviced site in Limerick cost €17,000. That is what it worked out at to make sites profitable for building homes to be sold at affordable prices. The price for the same site in a rural area is a minimum of €50,000. The costs of services include €10,000 for a treatment system, €3,000 to Irish Water to get connected to the system and €6,000 or €7,000 to the local authorities to break a gap in the owner's field. Somebody living in Limerick city would need to pay €17,000 to get a serviced site, even if he or she wanted to build the house. Applying that to a person living in County Limerick the minimum cost is €80,000. We must then consider services for treating sewerage and supplying supply in the city. People living in the county area pay for a treatment system so that we do not have the local authority poisoning the waterways. A report carried out recently by the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, showed that the biggest polluters in Ireland are the local authorities.

We have asked for investment in our towns and villages in County Limerick. We have been asking for the Askeaton sewerage system to be upgraded for 33 years now. Successive Governments, with which the Minister was involved, have promised sewerage systems in Askeaton, Oola, Hospital and Dromcolliher and have never once honoured those promises. At the same time, the Government believes it is okay to give €5.5 billion to Irish Water over five years.

I spoke earlier to the Taoiseach about Fedamore in County Limerick where people have been on a boil notice for 16 months. They are waiting for drinking water, for which each household now has to pay €60. Local property tax is supposed to be for services in local areas, including good footpaths, roads and water supplies. The Government has not honoured any of this. Now, it is talking about pumping water from the River Shannon all the way to Dublin because the population in Dublin is increasing by a huge number. The population of Limerick city and county is also increasing but the Government is not investing in sewerage systems in our towns and villages. That is what local property taxes are for but the Government is expanding the cities.

As I said, I am county born. I am a culchie and proud of it. That is my culture. Ireland is the best country in the world for looking after people's culture, with the exception of the Government, which does not care about cultures. I am involved in fundraising for different charities that the Government is not able to support. This is where the Government will apply tax. People will see vintage vehicle owners in Ireland out raising funds. People house their vehicles in sheds close to their homes. They go around the country in these vehicles raising money for people who are suffering from cancer and different ailments.

A bunch of young lads have just cycled from Mizen Head to Malin Head in honour of their friend, Cathal Scanlon, who passed away at 22 years of age. His birthday would be today. They are raising money for the TLC4CF cystic fibrosis charity and their cycle will finish tomorrow. Through his local property tax, the Minister is trying to tax the buildings in which people raising money for charity store the machinery, lawnmowers, bicycles, cars and the vintage vehicles they use to raise money for charities. If a hectare of land - 2.2 acres - was moved into a city base, 150 houses could be built on it. What the Government wants to do is tax rural Ireland.

I told the Minister yesterday that the price of building houses had gone through the roof. The Government is already getting 13.5% VAT on every single house that is built and every renovation that is carried out in this country. It is taking local authority fees on top of that. The Government gives nothing back but it keeps taking. We do not have the basic roads we need to drive on to go to work, take our children to school or get the products from the farmers to the co-operatives and different stores in order that we can be fed. The Government does not even want us to have roads. It is more interested in importing stuff and closing everyone down. Local property tax was meant to be put back into communities and spent locally. It went to a central fund and the Government gave us the crumbs. Now, it is talking about giving it to the local authority to spend it locally.

Rural people and SMEs have had enough. A figure of 51% of people in Ireland are employed by SMEs and 37% of people live in rural areas. We are paying double and triple the amount of tax that people living in cities pay because we have no services. The Government is now trying to tax us more.

When this amendment is voted on tonight, I hope everyone watching will see the rural Deputies who are voting against this amendment and with the Government. When they knock on people's doors and say they are here to represent them and that they are with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and this and that, I hope people remember their names. I hope they run them from their doors and that those Deputies drive away on roads with bad potholes and bust every spring in their cars. They deserve every bit of it. The Government invests nothing.

I will mention this once more. Askeaton has waited 33 years for an upgrade to the sewerage system. The local authority is pumping raw sewerage into the River Shannon. The deal in Dromcolliher is that the biggest polluter is the local authority. The sewerage system in the village of Hospital in County Limerick is at full capacity and what did the Government come back with? It said it will upgrade the sewerage systems but it will not allow extra capacity. That means that towns and villages in the rural areas of County Limerick are not allowed to expand. whereas the cities are allowed to expand. The Government is putting no investment into the towns and villages in rural Limerick.

I am in favour of this amendment. I am delighted that the Rural Independent Group is the biggest voice. Six of us represent five counties but it looks now like we are representing and speaking out for the whole country because we are speaking sense. We are from rural areas. The Minister may notice one thing about the Rural Independent Group. We are all self-employed. We know what is happening on the ground because we live this day in and day out. I ask him to reconsider what he is doing, create equality between rural and city areas, break the balance moneywise and give a tax break to people in rural towns and villages.

We are paying the most carbon tax because we have on infrastructure and we have to drive to go to work.

The Government takes nothing into account because all the services are in Dublin. Someone can go 100 yards and have a shop, taxi or Luas. He or she can head out to Bray or Greystones on the DART as well. We do not have those luxuries; we have to drive everywhere. We cannot walk or cycle because it is not safe. I ask the Minister to try to provide equality for the rural areas, towns and villages as well as the cities. He should equalise the funding and give a tax break to the 37% of the people in this country who pay the most taxes and get the least services.

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