Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I, too, want to speak to the amendment. I have listened to Deputies across the House saying that there are so many initiatives coming from the Department that we cannot keep up with them. I am not saying it is devoid of ideas but it certainly needs to do an impact assessment on many of the schemes it has brought out. I welcome many of the schemes, but the councils do not have the staff to deal with them. The flow of information back and forward is too slow and untimely.

On the proposal for renters, the cost of rent is outrageous. If we listened to the Minister's colleagues, we would think everything was hunky-dory. My own daughter, Councillor Máirín McGrath, raised the issue at a meeting in the county council. All her friends, who are 25 years of age, are emigrating because they cannot even rent a house, let alone aspire to ever own a house. While the scheme in the budget is welcome, we are only ticking at the edges. The basic cost of rent is outrageous. We are educating people with the college schemes that the Minister, Deputy Harris, has introduced, which I welcome. When they are all educated, they are getting on planes and are gone- imithe. That is a pity. Is mór an trua é sin. It is sad, because we need all those young people, their hands on deck and their expertise, enthusiasm and initiative to build our country, rebuild it and keep it going. As I said, there are many schemes and it is so hard to interpret them. Even the Croí Cónaithe scheme, which I welcome, is so slow. First, it was totally unfit for purpose. Now it has been amended, thankfully, and it is better but there are so many regulations and hoops to go through to get on to many of these schemes that it is just unfair.

The Department is churning out schemes. It is the same with the voluntary sector, which I am a very proud member of myself. It is not being enabled and allowed to do the work it could do. It could more. I know there are issues with a charitable housing association and that is a pity. There are so many good small voluntary housing groups out there. My own, Caisleán Nua, is a voluntary housing association and that name is being tarnished. There is also the Irish Council for Social Housing, ICSH, which I was a member of for probably seven or eight years. It was a national body that was gobbled up and taken over by the bigger housing authorities. It killed the spirit of the parish and the late, great Canon Hayes to light one candle, rather than curse the dark. It has killed all those voluntary groups. Whether they provided six, ten or 20 houses, they all helped hugely. They will do even more now but the bigger ones came in and got bigger and bigger and it became like the Construction Industry Federation. That was not good. I want to pay tribute to Donal McManus and his team in the ICSH. They have worked over the years and have tried to hold the line and keep the balance between the small associations, of which there are hundreds, and the bigger ones. There is a role for all of them but they need to be measured and they need to respect the situation and the funding. It is not all rosy and lots of tweaking needs to be done. I find that the councils do not have the staff and the numbers. I am not saying they are experts. They need more staff to deal with all these schemes

I will finish on the issue of voids, of which there are many. The councils are too slow in bringing them back into use. Some of them have been there for years. Three single rural cottages came back into use in County Tipperary in the past 18 months, thankfully, but there are dozens of them out there. It looks awful when you see council estates with houses boarded-up. That is an issue of funding. It is so hard to get the funding from the Department. There are too many logjams and delays and they cannot get enough. I understand that in Northern Ireland, when a house is empty it has to be re-let within three months. Why are we leaving them void here for 12 months, 15 months and two years?

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