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

The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, and the Ministers of State, Deputies O'Donnell and Noonan, appeared at the housing committee today to discuss Housing for All. The Ministers spoke about the houses being built in Limerick city and elsewhere in the country. I welcomed the waiving of the planning permission fee for local authorities. The positivity stopped, however, when we considered County Limerick and discussed infrastructure. Everybody in my constituency is on the back foot because of the lack of infrastructure. Houses cannot be built in County Limerick due to the lack of infrastructure. We spoke at length about the promises of Government through the past 38 to 40 years with regard to the sewerage system in Askeaton, an issue previously raised by a Fianna Fáil councillor who is now retiring. The timeline for delivery in that regard is now between 2025 and 2030.

A mortgage for a house means that you have to be able to build a house. In County Limerick at the moment, we only have two or three locations in the county where we can actually build houses and get mortgages. That affects the supply and demand, which means the price will be higher.

Let us look at the banking institutions and the way they rate people for a mortgage. They put them on a high interest rate to check if they can afford a mortgage over 12 months. If a person has a dependant, the bank charges for the dependant. If a person has a car loan, there is a charge for the car loan. By the time it is all added up, a couple would nearly want to be on €1,000 each per week to afford a €300,000 mortgage and to make it barely payable for the banking system. Will the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, tell me if there is any couple on €1,000 each to come up with a mortgage of €300,000? They have to show this, and they also have to show that they are able to save to get a mortgage. We have got a problem in Limerick. We have no infrastructure, which is a failure of the Government and previous governments for not investing in it. The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, is going to announce next week that funding is going to be given to the county councils to bring in the infrastructure that Uisce Éireann is not able to produce. That means I might be able to build houses in Limerick for the people who need them and who can try to get mortgages.

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