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

I am glad to get the opportunity to speak. Planning is hurting a great number of people in our county who cannot get planning to build houses for themselves. It is the Government Planning Regulator who is the cause of this. These people just want planning permission. They will build the house themselves and they will foot the bill, as dear as it is, but they are not getting the planning permission.

Voids are the next issue and I have been talking about these for the past six or eight months. In a place called Gneevgullia, there are five vacant houses and four of them are in that condition for more than three years. There is a house in an estate in Killarney that is vacant for more than four years. Can you imagine that? The reason that house is vacant is because the local authority will only give €11,000 and the house will cost up to €100,000 to bring it back into use. That is not good enough. The local authorities do not have the money, whatever the spin the Government is putting on it.

On renting, landlords - I do not like calling them landlords but prefer calling them house owners - are getting out because of the regulations and the fact that when they want their house back, they cannot get it back. On the eviction ban, I am sorry to say to Sinn Féin, but I do not support it because that hurts the renting and will hurt it further. The Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, is causing so much hardship for house owners who have been renting their houses and they are getting out because of that board.

Then there is the issue of the sewerage in our towns and villages. People who cannot get planning permission out the country, who are locals themselves, cannot get it inside in the towns and villages either because there is no treatment plant. That has been highlighted by several Deputies in the House and the Government is not taking it to heart.

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