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

How can we build houses? For houses, we need infrastructure, and infrastructure is water and sewerage systems. We can see across the whole country that Irish Water has taken over the services but there are no adequate sewerage or water systems in County Limerick. Irish Water went around to different areas and said it was going to upgrade the existing sewerage systems, but it was not going to allow for any extra capacity in the towns and villages around Ireland, including County Limerick.

We look at people who want to build a one-off house, who are paying thousands of euro - so much per square foot - to build a house in their own area, putting in their own sewerage systems and their own water systems, and the Government stopped that and made it unaffordable for them to do it. On the one hand, people want to build a house but the Government will not let them because it prices them out of the market and, on the other, people who want to move into towns and villages cannot do so because there are no sewerage and water systems. Millions of euro are being spent up here in Dublin and it is bursting at the seams. People cannot get into or out of Dublin, yet the Government is looking at more and more investment in Dublin. I ask the Government to shove it out into the counties and to put in investment. Do we have to take it out of the hands of the Government and Irish Water to give us infrastructure in Limerick? Do we have to take it away from them and get investors to come in to make an investment in our county? We need investors who want to see the people of County Limerick housed. Do we have to do that? All the Government is doing is putting up walls to stop us from doing it.

The Land Development Agency has not built one house in Limerick, with all the promises it made, and it was only building houses in the city. The city of Limerick promotes the county, and the county of Limerick promotes the city, if the Government puts in the infrastructure for both, but it has done nothing. Why? It is because the Government does not understand what it is doing. All it understands is letting the Departments block people at every avenue when they try to help, and it tries to make out that everything is its own idea. That is the problem. Go to people who know what they are talking about and let people invest and get their counties up and running.

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