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

The Minister said one thing that I was very glad to hear him say. I said it 20 minutes ago and I have heard the Minister say it now. I am very glad the Minister has said on the record of the Dáil that we have to build more homes. I put the question back to the Minister, however. What can we do to make it possible for us to build more homes in Ireland? When I say "We", I mean us, our local authorities and our small builders. I must say once again that we have lost those people. I want to see us being able to win them back. Those builders might be too tired to go taking on that role again because it is not an easy life and being a small or medium-sized builder is not an easy thing for any person to do, but we have to make it attractive for them to do so, or perhaps it will be their sons and daughters. I remind the Minister they were a source of employment and business locally. They kept local hardware stores going, with local hardware merchants, timber yards and steel yards, and we want to try to get all of that going again.

It is nearly gone to the stage where if you were driving the car and you saw a gap after being burst into a field with somebody building a house, you would nearly stop and take a picture of it to send to your friends saying, "Look who is building a house." My goodness, if you saw a builder going building five or ten houses, you would definitely take a picture of that and send it around saying, "Look who started building, isn't it great", or, "How are they managing it at all?" Ten or 20 years ago you would take no notice. I do not want a situation like during the boom when if you stood in the one spot for too long, somebody could build a house on top of you, because we were gone crazy that time. We want to see measured building and the homes being sold at an affordable rate. The Minister is the Minister for Finance and I am once again putting it back to him. What can the Government do to make it profitable and sensible for the person to build them, for the local authority to build them, and for the person to be able to ultimately purchase? Ideally, we want to see people getting local authority houses or getting a tenancy for those, or getting the right buy them in the future, or young people being able, after a period of time, to buy their own house and getting going on the road for themselves.

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