Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Last night, I highlighted many measures in the budget that were to be welcomed. I congratulate the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donovan, on increasing his budget for floor relief. He listed out the many projects he hopes to get started next year and they are all very familiar to me because they all featured on plans in 2015 and 2016. The problem with such projects, as he will be aware, is trying to get them from inception to getting the construction started on the ground. I emphasise that the minor works flood relief schemes that are in place are of critical importance to communities. As I have said previously, we should consider providing a scheme for channels, which are not within the charge of the local authorities or the OPW but rather of the riparian owner, along the lines of the local improvement scheme to help get some of the channels cleaned. If that was done on a pilot basis to see how it would work, that would help.

The Minister of State, Deputy Fleming, mentioned that 14,800 new households will have their housing needs met under the housing assistance payment. That is great but the problem relates to getting the houses where HAP will be taken. He stated that a total of 14,800 new homes will take HAP but I cannot foresee that happening in any town or village in Galway East, where people on the housing list are being told they have to leave because the house is being sold or the landlord's family members are moving in. The problem is they cannot find another home. The numbers look great but there is something fundamentally wrong here.

One issue that has been missed, as I have mentioned to the Ministers, Deputies Michael McGrath and Donohoe, relates to the fact that the help-to-buy scheme, which is being extended and I welcome that, needs to be expanded. It needs to include first-time buyers of second-hand properties in our towns, villages and countryside. There are houses all over the place that are not occupied. They could come back into circulation if young first-time buyers were afforded the same supports as first-time buyers of new houses. It has gone beyond the idea of saying we want to build new houses. We do, and there is demand for new houses, but there is potential here to do two things, namely, repopulate towns, villages and country areas and bring back people who can work, raise their families and live within communities in rural areas. It can help us also with remote working and so on. We need to ensure we provide incentives to first-time buyers and allow them to avail of the help-to-buy scheme for that purpose.

Moreover, the Rebuilding Ireland home loan scheme should be expanded to include the refurbishment costs of houses that are bought. If, for instance, a first-time buyer buys a second-hand house, he or she may have to upgrade it to install an air-to-water heat pump, to insulate it or to do whatever needs to be done with it to make it liveable, modern and comfortable, yet the Rebuilding Ireland home loan scheme will support only the purchase price of that property. That gap needs to be filled. The mechanism is there to fill it and it will make housing available that is affordable and in the right places, where we will not have to worry about planning.

Also, where young people are brave enough to buy those properties, we should exempt them from planning charges and levies and give them a chance to get going with them. It is a way of regenerating these places.

In talking about the budget, there is one other thing we must tackle, which is the idea that climate action is going to solve all our problems. Today, horticultural producers and farmers were outside the House to highlight the issue of peat production in Ireland for vegetable and mushroom growers. The fact is that we are now importing peat from Latvia due to the cessation of all peat milling in this country. It is being brought by the truck load to the port in Latvia and shipped to Ireland. Then it is being trucked up the midlands to be packaged and distributed. There are a number of aspects to this. The first is that 90% of what we are transporting is water. Second, if we brought peat back into production, only 1% of the peat bogs would be needed for that. Third, we have no alternative in this country. Fourth, we do not know what we are importing. We do not know or have control over what is in it, yet we are paying a lot more money for it. With this move, we are creating more carbon instead of saving on carbon. We are supposed to be greening our country and we are supposed to be able to grow plants and vegetables in the best way possible, but what do we do? We cut off the lifeline.

The mushroom industry is on its knees. The Minister will find that it will relocate to places where it can do its business, and it will take the jobs with it. Those jobs are in rural areas in the regions in Ireland. The Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, was in the House earlier. This is something in respect of which we must introduce emergency legislation, if that is required. The mystery about all this is that Latvia is in the European Union and is working under the same rules that we work under in terms of environmental protection, yet it can produce the peat and send it here while we have stopped doing it. It is a laugh and a joke. It is something we must tackle as a matter of urgency.

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