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

I appreciate what the Minister is trying to do here in Dublin with regard to housing. I appreciate the urgency and the number of people who are looking for housing. I know there is a very real problem and that his number one consideration is to deal with that and to get the numbers down. I raised an issue here in the Dáil with the Taoiseach a week or two ago. I was grateful for the Minister's response at the time but it is not the response I want. Heretofore, there were always extensions of five years to planning permissions for one-off housing. That is now being ruled out. I ask him to reconsider that because many people who got planning permission now find that their time is now running out because they were not able to build during the coronavirus pandemic or because they were not able to get loans for one reason or another. Work has not been great and some were not able to get going. Such people now face another conundrum because materials have become so expensive that many will not be able to start building their houses for the foreseeable future. There is also a scarcity of contractors. There are many different problems.

Perhaps the Minister does not know but there is an awful problem with getting planning permission for one-off houses in rural Ireland. People can get over all the hurdles, provide further information when sought and have their permission duly granted only for the application to be appealed to An Bord Pleanála. It is now the case that 90% of decisions appealed to An Bord Pleanála are overturned. Even if the inspector who comes down is of the view that the permission should be upheld, what do the members of the board do, people who have never been down in Kerry, but refuse the permission? Most of these objections and appeals are vexatious. We are now going to put people who have planning permission through that rigmarole again.

I appreciate that the Minister wants to get big sites here in Dublin going but this is affecting the ordinary person in rural Ireland who wants to put a roof over his or her head and who will only be doing this once in his or her lifetime. I understand what is happening here in Dublin. It is a different scenario. People get planning permission for a site and then hold that site until they see the time is right and sell it off. The next owner may do something else with the planning permission. They may increase the density and make the site more valuable. That is holding things up and I appreciate that but the scenario I am outlining to the Minister is totally and absolutely different. I ask him to change that.

Surely this issue is affecting Deputies in other rural counties, such as Clare. This five-year extension must have been available there as well. I ask the Minister to look at that again because it will hurt people. I know he wants people to build homes but this will stop people doing so. They cannot get going right now because they cannot get loans or meet the current exorbitant building costs. Some are trying to get on their feet because they have not been working for a couple of years. There are many other little reasons, although they are big reasons for the people who are being held up. They would not have sought planning permission in the first place if they had known these things would arise. These sites are for themselves. They are not sites for sale or anything like that but sites to build a house on. People want to put a roof over their own heads and young couples want a place to rear their families. Such families may be needed to keep local schools going because numbers are going down in rural areas. I represent and adore people in places like Shrone. These areas need people to build houses around their schools. There are several other such places.

There are also other issues. From time to time, local authorities have zoned lands around towns and villages that belong to farmers and other landowners who have no notion of ever selling these lands or building houses on them. Zoning these lands makes them more valuable and the owners have to pay more stamp duty on them. That has to be looked at as well. These people cannot be forced to build houses on land they never wanted to sell in the first place.

What I honestly believe, even regarding land here in Dublin, is that there should not be any such thing as zoning. Let every applicant apply for planning permission and let that be decided on the merits of the place involved. I refer to all this wasting time with zoning land, and all the time it takes. Let applicants, whether the land is zoned or not, apply for planning permission and let every case be decided on its own merits. That is the real way of building houses.

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