Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I, too, am delighted to speak to the motion. The Ceann Comhairle commented on county development plans. He was in a county council and mé féin freisin. We had some hope. Now matters are obviously dictated by management. The planning and development agency and other agencies are overruling the decisions of councils. Power is being taken away from councils.

A video was sent to me by a 30-year-old Irishman called Cian who has worked on building sites. There is a GoFundMe page for an excellent documentary, but I do not know who made it. The man was in care when he was young and tried to get PPS numbers, but the system beat him. He has worked with a builder in Dublin who gave him a loan of a truck which he lived in for a couple of years. He was going to work on the bus hungry. People tried to give him things. He does not have a hope of getting a house. I urge everyone to watch it. It is a fabulous documentary. The man was able to and did work every day he could. He will continue to do so, but he has no hope of being recognised as an Irish citizen and a man who could get supports and buy his own home. That is why thousands of people are leaving and going to Australia. There is no hope.

I met a man on the picket line in Roscrea. His daughter came home at Christmas and told her mam and dad that she would be back to the town only for them because she has no hope of getting a house.

Corporate greed, including funds buying up homes, is shocking. We had the very same thing in Tipperary, where conglomerates bought up land. We are now offering €14 million for a 700-acre estate.

Now we have someone else fighting with the auctioneers in the High Court, with the big wigs across the river. He wants to give €19 million for it. My God, you would think they were talking about euro - €10 or €100 - but it is €4 million of a difference. We have no laws to stop this carry on. We have no land commission. Similarly, we have no rules to stop these big conglomerates coming in and buying up all the houses and buying up the land. We have the Land Development Agency and planning agencies. We have agencies with soft chairs inside them and a plaque on the wall outside, a plethora of staff and a CEO but they are useless, toothless and fruitless. Jobs for the boys. They are ineffectual and they have no impact for the people who want to build a house on their own land and who cannot get planning. They are having no impact for the people who are trying to develop houses. I go back to the focal scoir and the county development plan. It is in every town, including the Cahir town plan. This year in Tipperary zoned land was reduced by more than 60% on the insistence of the management and the Land Development Agency. Imagine a housing crisis with a figure of 14,000 idle. The biggest issue with the current county development plan, when it was being debated in the last two years, was dezoning land. What does that do only drive up the price of the land on which houses could be built on? We have a jumbled up system. It is not there to serve the people and it has failed badly. We blame the county council – I think Deputy Collins, Deputy O'Donoghue or some other Deputy did – but they are pushing paper up to the Parliament and six months later they are pushed down again. Then it goes to Carlow to that section and then to Dublin to another section. Round and round the merry-go-round and one of these days the wheels will fall off the wagon. Someone needs to take it by the scruff of the neck and sort out the log jams and blackguarding that is going on in the system. I did not even go near An Bord Pleanála and false objections. That is another area that should be tightened up.

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