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

I thank Sinn Féin sincerely for bringing this motion before the Dáil. It is very important work. I want to declare an interest in the provision of a lot of different types of accommodation.

I want to speak of the example of the town of Kenmare. People cannot get planning for anything in Kenmare. We have inadequate services there so we cannot build anything now or for the foreseeable future.

We have a situation where a land tax is being levied on people who have land and the Government thinks that is going to solve the housing crisis because it thinks it is going to force people. For example, if a farmer in Killarney town is farming and his land is being used for the purpose of growing grass, and if he has not budged during the last boom or bust, he is not going to go booming or busting now either. We cannot force people to make a change in their life. If a person is structured for farming and if they are using their land for that, we cannot make them. It is the same as coming along and getting the local authority to send out letters to people involved in Airbnb, telling them they must change and rent that accommodation, that flat, that apartment or that extra room in their house long term. They simply will not do it. What the Government is doing is cutting off a further supply of housing. Between the whole Ukrainian issue and the fact people are going to be getting out of short-term lets and not getting into long-term lets, what the Government is actually doing is making the situation a lot worse than it already is.

Everyone seems to say that modular homes are the way to go. I have been speaking to people who know what they are talking about - builders who are building houses every day of the week - and they say it makes no sense to go down the road of modular homes and that this is not a quick-fix solution.

The right thing to do is simply, in the old-fashioned way, to go into fields and build houses and give up the nonsense. If the Government had half the number of reports, surveys and studies, it would still have too many. All it does is talk about this. For God's sake, ten, 20 and 30 years ago we were building houses. All we are doing now is talking about it. That is why there is such a homelessness problem. I thank the people in the housing and homeless housing sections of Kerry County Council who are dealing with that problem every day.

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