Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We are talking about the problems with housing again. I want to address a few issues that are having a serious effect on how we deliver our housing stock. In my constituency, many towns and villages do not have a wastewater treatment plant. These towns and villages have been frozen out of any developments as Bord Pleanála deems such developments to be premature until municipal water treatment plants are in place. In April 2022 the Department and the Minister announced a pilot wastewater treatment scheme costing €50 million to help towns and villages. To date, no announcement has been made on any of these treatment plants. It is 18 months on and when the announcement comes, we will then have the process of acquiring land, the planning process, etc. We will probably not see any of that money giving results for another three or four years. Something has to be done to make these things happen more quickly. Some €50 million is probably 10% of what is needed in this country to provide this infrastructure in our towns and villages if we are to develop them and to make them hubs where people can live and work and support their communities.

While we have restored an exemption for planning development charges, we are now taking this money back this other way from people. If we are to be real, we should defer this measure until we see progress being made in the numbers we have in this regard. It is important we deal with these things in a practical way. When we had a vote previously on the eviction ban, our Regional Group brought forward vital proposals. These included adjustment of the Croí Cónaithe scheme, which has proven successful. The tenant in situpurchase scheme has also proven successful. I can see this in my constituency, where the local authority has told me the demand for these schemes is increasing.

One thing we have not done, though, which we voted on and agreed here, has been to remove the barriers to leasing out the 12,000 homes vacant due to the people who own them being in full-time care in nursing homes. The Minister of State with special responsibility for older people, Deputy Butler, has concerns about this initiative. She has been reviewing it since May. I put it on the record again that this proposal is not to put people into nursing homes. Nobody goes into a nursing home without it being independently assessed by the HSE to see if people are suitable candidates. I do not, therefore, see a problem. This proposal is for people who have decided and been assessed to go into nursing homes. It is important this review, or codology, is finished and we try to bring some of these houses on stream by removing the barriers to the taxation measures that will be instituted in cases and apply when the houses of people in nursing homes are rented out.

The planning situation we have, the local area plans and how we develop them is anti-development now. We have completely lost control of what we want to do concerning local area plans. We are dezoning land and then rezoning land that is not available. We are also zoning land which is landlocked and doing all these kinds of things. On paper, we are doing everything according to the regulations and the regulator is then happy with this. Regarding this thing of having densities in towns and villages and planning in this regard, the threat is that if more land is zoned than what the core strategy tells us to do, the result will be the Minister taking the whole endeavour and directing it. This is wrong. Local people, local knowledge and local councillors should be able to make decisions and ensure we have more than enough land zoned in the first place to try to bring down the price of the land for building on rather than just having it quoted and having a large increase in the value of that land as a result.

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