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

I thank the Independent Group for bringing this very important debate to the floor of the Dáil. At the outset, I want to give an example. Development levies are needed and we have to get money. I always used this analogy when I was on the council myself. An area I was very proud and am proud to represent for many years, both on the council and up here, includes Glencar, Beaufort, Kilgobnet, and that entire area. If someone put in a planning application and their house is above in Glencar, they will be told they have to pay a contribution perhaps for a playground to be built in Killorglin. That does not make sense for people in an area where they are not going to benefit from a service and where they are providing their own services. They are providing their own water, they are paying for their ESB connection and they are paying for the sewerage treatment. There is no footpath or public lighting. When people see a big development levy put at the bottom of their planning permission, it is hard for them to take that. Of course, if someone is in a built-up area and is getting services that is a different story. There has to be fairness in all of this. There has to be understanding in it. At present, that fairness and understanding is not there.

I have to take exception to one thing. I have heard this in here and you would get tired of hearing it. I will call out the words being used - "cowboy developers" and "cowboy builders". We cannot listen to too much more of this nonsense. We need builders. We need respectable people to build houses, whether they are building for us, for local authorities, for social and affordable housing or whether they are building private houses. We need more of them. We need developers. Being a developer is not a sin. There is nothing wrong with being a person who has the ability and brains to borrow money, buy land, build property on it and sell it. If you were to listen to some people in here, you would think you were some sort of an evil antichrist because you were a builder, you had a van and the ability to get up in the morning and build things and do things. My good God, if we were to rely on some of the people in here, we would starve of hunger, we would not have any place to sleep, no one would have a house and no one would have a roof over their head, or if the roof was leaking there would be nobody to repair it because these cowboy developers and cowboy builders would not repair it. You would get sick to death of listening to some of the politicians in here and the rubbish they go on with. If you were to follow them home, you would know they never did anything. If they were not here they would be nowhere because they certainly would not be working for a builder or developer anyway. We need those people in Ireland. Yes, there were wrong things done by some of them but my good God, they were not all wrong. We need small and medium-sized builders. In the parish I come from, we had small builders and developers who used to do or three or four houses and sell them. They used to work for the local authority. Many of them are gone to their eternal reward and God be good to them. They did a lot of good and excellent work. There is nothing wrong with being a builder and to be classifying them as cowboys is wrong.

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