Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I travelled in the company of the Ceann Comhairle and the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, to Abu Dhabi, which has the tallest building in the world. We had an exciting visit and we did a lot of good business for the State. However, in this country we have rows about the height of houses. People cannot build a two-storey house - it has to be a dormer bungalow or a bungalow with a porthole window on the gable end. The whole thing has gone crazy. We are all wearing masks since the pandemic, but the Department officials and the regulations are masked and cannot see, notice or understand rural Ireland. Deputy O'Donoghue just said so. This is crazy stuff.

In the Cahir area plan - Cathair Dún Iascaigh, a lovely town on the River Suir - the councillors were forced to reduce the zoned land by almost 85%. Do we want to create ghettos again? There is a huge pile of land that was not developed due to the crash and everything else. I understand there was too much land zoned. However, it goes back that far. The council has decided now to build houses under Part V on a green area that the residents have had for 30 years. This is bonkers stuff. The homelessness crisis is getting worse. Many people do a great deal of work with the homeless. I should mention Alice Leahy of the Alice Leahy Trust, a wonderful Tipperary woman who buried her husband today. She does tremendous work looking after people, but we are driving people into homelessness. We are driving people into poverty and penury, as I said as well today.

I helped a young lady get planning permission in the Golden Vale six, seven or eight months ago. I rang her father and I said "thanks be to God the planning is through". He told me he knew that but he has 250 acres of land, with timber hanging all over it and she is not allowed to have a chimney. In Waterford and Tipperary councils, the first thing done with a void is to block the fireplace or chimney. What are we trying to do? Are we looking to have our people perished or frozen because they cannot heat their homes? Deputy Danny Healy-Rae might tell the House about a family in his area with a young baby who could not even heat the baby's bottle after a storm. They had to move to their parents' house.

Are we not thinking at all? The Minister of State is a sensible man and I respect him. I do not know what his predecessor in the constituency, former Deputy James Bannon, might say if he was here. People are eager to live in the country and be good custodians of the environment. One would think we are all rapists of the environment, according to the Greens. They are like the messiah, telling us we cannot do this, that or the other. We cannot do anything. There were always a few people who would not be careful, possibly due to mental health issues or whatever.

I stood on a bridge in my own village of Newcastle one day with some people from the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, who come every week or two weeks to test water quality. I asked them to go down 200 yd below the outlet of a septic tank. It is the same as I have in my house, although I have a better percolation system. There are more than 100 houses there. The people from the EPA would not do what I asked. It is wrong to say the EPA is in bed with the council but it is co-operating with it and will not prosecute the council. As Deputy Collins has said, however, if an egg cup amount of slurry falls on the road from a tanker because of a blocked nozzle, they come down on that farmer like a tonne of bricks. It is blackguarding.

I have seen farmers prosecuted for many reasons; some were correct but many were prosecuted because mental health or financial issues meant they could not look after their stock or property. We recently saw how a Department official was prosecuted for neglecting stock and the Minister took a case to the High Court to get him off and save his pension. What the hell is going on? The blackguarding of people in rural Ireland is shocking. They are being terrorised by Department officials and their folders and cameras, as well as everything else. They are being blackguarded. I am depending on the Minister of State and other people like him in the Department to get some bit of sanity in here so we can get some balance, fairness and respect for the country people who have always been custodians of the land. They always fed the people, demonstrating meitheal and looking after each other. Eventually, we will be hungry, cold and perished and people will not be living for anybody. We will be back to the days of the Famine in this country if we keep going with these daft policies from the Greens that the Minister of State's party and Fianna Fáil support. There are some rural Independents backing them, to their shame.

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