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

I thank the Deputies who brought forward the Bill, but I will have a few more things to say about that in a moment. I wish to declare an interest in this subject. For many decades, I have been providing accommodation for all sectors of society. According to the Central Statistics Office, the average house price was €315,000 in May 2023, 14.8% higher than in 2020 and 125.8% higher than in 2013. That is a staggering increase in the cost of housing. The biggest problem in this whole issue is the availability of housing.

One thing I will keep talking about until it stops is that I am unable to understand why people who are elected to positions on county councils or in the Dáil use their influence, power and knowledge of the planning process to object to housing. For example, people from the party proposing the Bill have objected not to the building of ten or 20 homes but to the building of thousands of social and affordable homes. It is not just members of Sinn Féin who object to houses. Some people in other parties or none are serial objectors. I am not able to understand it. If you want houses, you want houses. I guarantee that hell will freeze over before you will see Danny Healy-Rae or Michael Healy-Rae objecting to houses being built in Kerry. We would give the skin off our backs to see people get planning. We know that to put people into houses, they have to be granted planning. It is getting more costly to apply for planning and more difficult to get it as a result of several issues, one of which is the objectors.

I want to talk about people leaving the rental market. This has been happening continuously in recent years. To be honest, an awful lot of the utterances inside here are a cause of people being fearful.

People seem to forget that the people who provide accommodation pay 56% of that rent to the Government and the State. More than half of it goes in tax. I never hear the individuals who are shouting here all the time, the serial objectors who are objecting to houses being built in their constituencies, saying anything about the 50% tax. If the Government reduced the tax, right away the rents could be reduced. I am sure that could be organised but the Government does not seem to be willing to do so. At the end of the day, we need supply and one of the most important things we need is social and affordable houses to be built to make it affordable for young couples and young families to be able to rent properties.

We also need to do something that was always there before, single rural cottages being built on family farms where a house would be built for a family and it would be there for future generations. That was a great scheme. It is next to impossible to get a single rural cottage built now and it is not happening. I want to see all local authorities building up and ensuring we have no such thing. I do not like the word "void". There is no such thing as a void. A house is empty if nobody is living in it and it is an empty house. We want to see those houses being brought back into use as they would if they were in the private market.

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