Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputy Ó Broin and Sinn Féin on bringing forward this motion. I spent nearly five years on the housing committee and Deputy Danny Healy-Rae is right. If the reports, paper, visits and experts brought in had all laid a block each, or maybe two, we would have had lots of houses built. There is, however, an inertia here. First, the Government abandoned building houses after the economic crash. Then we gave them all off to the big schemes and the vulture funds. On the other hand, there is the fake oil crisis the Government is trying to blame on the war. I refer to the cost of insulation, labour, blocks and cement. Equally, there is also the whole mica crisis, which has still not been fixed but the cost of which the Government is putting on the taxpayers as well. The Government is crucifying ordinary taxpayers. I do not see why Cement Roadstone Holdings, CRH, and the big companies should not have paid for the mica issue. Why should the taxpayer be the patsy?

I do not see why we cannot allow people in rural Ireland who want to build houses to do so. This is the fundamental issue. The Minister of State is a decent man himself, but his own party and its links with An Taisce leads to nothing but objections. The Government will not let people who have the wherewithal, the site, the vision, the passion, the ability and the courage to house themselves to do. Someone else mentioned the price of water connections. We could give the Government phone numbers. Despite the cost of development charges, nothing at all is being got for them. It is not even possible to get a pothole filled.

The Government is cleaning out people in taxes. It has cleaned them out so much now with extra fuel charges, the carbon taxes and VAT that in 2022 the Government made almost €4 billion more than it did the year before. It is nothing short of daylight robbery. Come back Ned Kelly, who robbed the rich to pay the poor. The Government is robbing the poor to pay the rich. This is what it is doing, day in and day out, and its members should be ashamed of themselves. If the Government cannot do the job, then it is time for it to pack up and move out and let someone who can do the job with passion and vision. Let us go back to T.K. Whitaker and Sean Lemass, who built this country from nothing. Now, we have reports and experts. We also have NGOs by the dozen, costing us €6 billion annually. Some of these NGOs are very good, but more of them are just pen pushers who have the ears of the Government. They are twisting and turning paper around and stopping progress.

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