Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the rural Independents for bringing forward this very important motion. I also thank my friends in the Independent Group for affording me the time to speak on it. I have spoken in this House on many occasions about the housing crisis, which has affected my constituents in Clare. It is a crisis that affects not just the nearly 3,000 families on the housing list in Clare but also those who have been saving up to build or buy their first or forever home and get their foot on the property ladder. Availability of properties in rural Ireland is far scarcer and much more difficult than elsewhere. Those who wish to build would find it easier to get planning for 20 houses than one in rural Ireland, for example, and that is thanks to this Government.

I stand in support of Clare County Council, which is being pushed back on our county development plan by the Minister, which is absolutely wrong. The average house price in Clare is now just under €235,000, an increase of over 2% on last year. On Daft yesterday, for example, I saw a one-bedroomed apartment going for upwards of €125,000 in an employment blackspot in west Clare with a deficit of local services. No local could afford that, and it will become either a holiday home or an Airbnb.

In times of crisis innovative solutions are required. I welcome this motion and suggest that log cabin building be ramped up. Instead of the apartment I have just mentioned, a young couple starting out and saving could purchase a log cabin for just under €25,000, have it insulated and installed on site, on their land, with a concrete base for a total of just €47,740.

I wish to mention the extension to the help-to-buy scheme.

I raised this with the Minister, in particular because of rural communities not seeing developments and new builds in the past decade. The scheme will open up that opportunity for them, which I welcome. I do not know if log cabins are the future or whether they are the solution to this crisis, but I believe they are part of it.

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