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

-----writes a horrible, poisonous letter against a young, respectable person who is seeking planning permission and states that that individual should not have the right to have his or her entrance on the road, I say to hell with the person in TII and their dirty, horrible letter. I ask the people in TII to do something more important, namely, build bloody roads and bypasses, modernise our road network and give up sticking their noses into planning permission.

I want to talk about cabins being built, whether they are made of timber or using other methods. We must be more open to that. Local authorities must be given direction that, in the context of county development plans, they should be more open to accepting that. It happens in other countries. We must realise there is a housing crisis. We cannot be living in this idyllic world where everything has to be as it was before. If someone can erect a building at the back of another, for example, and if a young couple can live there and get a start in life, what in the name of God is wrong with that? If there is a garage that can be converted, the owner should be encouraged to proceed and should not be dissuaded from doing so. Obstacles should not be put in their way.

We are looking to instruct the Minister to publish the long-promised new rural housing guidelines to bring clarity and certainty to rural communities and to ensure that new rural planning guidelines allow for planning permission to be given for rural housing in all rural areas for those who have a genuine housing need. We call for the Government to relax the outdated laws in order to allow sustainable log cabin units to be constructed without unnecessary planning permission requirements. This can be done by amending the planning regulations to facilitate the construction of temporary or permanent structures for residential purposes on family-owned land in rural areas. We call for it to extend the help-to-buy scheme to first-time buyers who wish to buy a second-hand house or apartment, to introduce a new €20,000 grant aid package for anyone who wishes to build a permanent one-off house on his or her own lands and to amend the Croí Cónaithe towns scheme to include properties that are vacant for more than 30 days. We should forget about the notion of two years. Is the Government trying to stop houses being vacant for two years? Is it trying to stop people applying for the grant? It has made three messes already with that grant. I welcomed it when the Minister announced it, but why in the name of God did the Government make a mess of it? The proof that the Government made a mess of it is that it has amended it twice already. The Minister still has not given clarity to the local authorities about the amendments he made ten days ago. Why is that? Does he want to keep it a secret? It is a great scheme, why is it the case that if one rings any local authority and asks what directive it received from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, one will be told the Minister has not sent a directive yet. Local authorities do not know, for example, how long a person who gets that grant and rents a house must rent it for.

Can the house be sold after the grant being got for it and the house brought back into use? Can it be sold? There is no clarity. Local authorities do not have the application forms yet. We have the application forms from ten days' ago, but we do not have the new ones. We are being told that in certain cases new ones are required. Is the Department keeping it a secret or what?

We need a robust, independent Bord Pleanála that commands confidence. An Bord Pleanála that is there today does not command confidence because it is up to its neck in rubbish, where it has reports from its own inspectors and did not abide by its own reports.

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