Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We are looking at everything. The Minister has fled the Chamber. It is most disappointing from our point of view as a small group, grúpa beag, that the Minister never waits to reply. I mean no disrespect to the Minister of State but Deputy Darragh O'Brien is the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage. He makes announcement after announcement. I attended the annual general meeting of the Irish Council for Social Housing last week in a hotel near Heuston Station. Did the Minister attend? He did not. He was on Zoom. That group and 350 affiliated bodies contribute enormously, build houses and do an amount of work for the Government. It does that work where county councils and others cannot. The Minister fled this debate like snow off a ditch. At the end of his contribution, he clarified to Deputy Michael Healy-Rae that an instruction will be sent to local authorities today, which they will receive tomorrow. I do not remember the exact phrase he used but the Minister of State said something to the effect that he is endeavouring to send that circular. Why make a big announcement in a blaze of glory without any consultation? The councils are telling everyone they do not know what is expected because they have not received a circular or any information.

It was reported last week that 74 housing projects have stalled because they ran out of money as a result of overruns on cost. A person who was blind and deaf would know that costs have gone up enormously. That should have been anticipated. People involved in those projects now have to wait several months for a reply from the Department to get extra funds. The Department is clogging up the whole system, along with the planning regulator and the Land Development Agency, LDA. There are many agencies now that were never in place when I was a member of the county council. They were never there but we managed to build houses without all the red tape. I will not say it, but the word I would use to describe the situation starts with "b" and finishes with "t". There is paper up and down the country.

The Minister of State also said there are 830 villages, hamlets and some quite big towns with no sewage treatment plants. Shame on the Government. It is persecuting farmers and householders with septic tanks. Former Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, "Big Phil" Hogan introduced a septic tank charge when the dirty polluters were the local authorities themselves. That was the case in Bray and cities in Dublin and everywhere else. The Government is the same now. It has been found out. It is trying to demonise farmers and rural people for CO2 pollution. The Government has found out who the polluters are. It was on the front page of the newspapers last week and we all know who they are. The big people will not be touched. Big is wonderful with the Government. That is all it wants.

The proof of how interested the Government is in our motion is that one backbencher arrived to sit behind the Minister of State for three minutes but nobody else from any of the Government parties, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or the Green Party, or the Independents who regularly support the Government, came into the House. That tells it all. Cad a dhéanfaimid feasta gan adhmad? Where are the Members? They are too ashamed to come into the House because they know the Government's policy is an abject failure. They know it is all bluster, bluff, baloney, reports and investigations. I spent five years as a member of the housing committee and honest to God, I could not wait to get off it. If reports, investigations, documents and bringing witnesses before the committee could build houses, we would have a surplus of houses in this country. Everyone would have a house to themselves. That is how it would be. What is happening is not realpolitik.

I must also address my learned friends on the left, who like to lecture us all. I refer especially to Deputy Paul Murphy and his crew. Everyone who employs someone or has a development company is a bad person, a con man or a robber. That is an awful attitude. Someone needs to rehabilitate the Deputy so he understands what builders are and what they do. We cannot have houses without builders. Members of the Labour Party, which abolished town councils, are wringing their fingers that some cowboy builders are going to take advantage of what we are doing. We live in the real world. Our motion is an honest effort to try to get people in rural areas to solve part of the housing crisis. We are trying not to be negative all the time. We are putting forward a positive proposal.

I know at least ten people in south Tipperary who have built log cabins, in one shape or another. One poor man is in a situation of separation as the result of a marriage break-up. The house had to be sold. He bought a site and put a mobile home onto it. He built the most spectacular log finish all around it. He has now received an enforcement notice and will be dragged through the courts. He asked me where he will go. Will he live under the Main Guard in Clonmel with the other homeless people? I know of several other cases.

I know of a young barber who bought a log cabin in County Wicklow and put it behind his father and mother's house. It was delicately and sensitively placed. It fit the landscape. He has been leaving through the same entrance all his life but now the TII has a problem with the entrance. He is nevertheless leaving through that entrance every day. He has his own sewerage system. We are looking for problems.

The TII and the National Roads Authority, NRA, are the issue. We decommissioned the IRA but we cannot decommission the NRA. We cannot get rid of the NRA. We added the TII on top of the NRA. Many of the people involved are good people but the power they have is simply astounding. They issue diktats to councils. They will not build roads or do this or that.

It is like the man one time who was dating two different women in my parish. They are all dead now, so I can say it. He went to the stage in Ballmacarbry this night-----

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