Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We have a Bill of 750 or 800 pages we can hardly lift. Indeed, there is also a list of amendments, many of them tabled by the Minister. We are not operating in a silo here. I am speaking to amendments No. 195 and 196 in the group, in addition to other related ones. We are not operating in a silo. We have a housing crisis. We have a crisis with people emigrating. We have a shortage of nurses, teachers, construction workers and everything else. We think we can bring in this new planning Bill, but we have been waiting for rural planning guidelines for 20 years to deal with people who want to build in the countryside. These guidelines were promised by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil before the two previous elections but the Green Party decided we could not have them so people are in limbo. I mentioned the Sean Meehan case. He put up his own demountable log cabin and is going to jail over it. What are we at?

We have had all these debates and votes. I remember when I first joined the county council. I wish all the new councillors the best. I am delighted that my daughter, Máirín, has been re-elected to the county council with a fabulous vote. We want young people to come into politics, as well as every other career, but powers are being taken away from them, their hands are being tied behind their backs and they are blindfolded. We dealt with the county manager, the county development plans, and there was then back and forward with the county manager. We lost some and gained some, but practical work was done. However, we now have the Office of the Planning Regulator and all those layers being put on top again. It is total and absolute control of people. Most of the amendments we voted on were about controlling people.

As I said, when I built my house, thank God, in 1982-83, I got planning permission. We dug two test holes and filled them with water to make sure there was proper percolation for a septic tank.

My wife and eight children lived in the house and now the grandchildren come as well. The septic tank is working perfectly. It has probably been emptied eight times. I have emptied tanks. I was in that business. I emptied septic tanks that were constructed by hand in the sixties. You could not empty them because they were so perfect. They were emptied 40 years later. They worked perfectly. Now you have all kinds of percolation tests. I am all for ensuring that septic tanks work. So are the householders because they are the first people to suffer. Now you have all these kinds of stringent tests and new systems involving propellers and agitators that work off electricity but the power can go out, as it did in my home last night for hours. The bearings can also seize in them and they cost a fortune to run. These modern things are not half as good at helping the environment as what came before. Many of the ghost estates we were left with had big package treatment plants. They are still a problem. There is one in the Glen Hotel in Tipperary. Developers have bought it. The crowd who had it left. There are 20 residents there now, or more, and sewage is flowing down the road for the last month or six weeks. Irish Water will not touch it and neither will the county council. People are living in those kinds of conditions.

All of these regulations we are making make it impossible for the Irish people, na daoine óga, to live on, work on and enjoy the island whose freedom was fought for so dearly back in 1916, the twenties and 1922. What are they doing? They are voting with their feet. They are emigrating. They cannot get work near them and cannot drive because the Government parties, especially the Greens, are penalising them with carbon tax. If they want to build a house, there is not a hope. They cannot buy a house in the village. In my village and in 30 other villages in Tipperary, there are what I will not call plants because they are just big septic tanks four, five or six times the size of an ordinary one that are at full capacity, meaning people cannot build in the village. They are shoved into the towns but cannot get or afford a house there. In my area, they are competing with conglomerates that are buying up houses. We can talk here forever but if you stand back and study the matter, you see that they are just not being allowed so they are going to Dubai, as Deputy Healy-Rae said, to Australia, to Canada and to everywhere else. I met the INTO today. Teachers get great work over in those countries and their work is respected. If they come back here, they will not get those levels of jobs. They will not be able to get a wage sufficient to allow them to live, get a house or get on the ladder. It is a very serious situation and this huge planning Bill is not going to help one bit. It will make it harder to build.

Unlike other people, I say that people should have a right to object, within reason. People need an opportunity to do that but we make it so difficult for people to get planning permission for a house to live in the country. I have mentioned Sean's cabin and the thought of putting this pensioner in jail, demolishing his cabin, sending him the bill and putting him on the housing list. There are already 4,000 on the housing list in Clonmel. That is what he is supposed to do. There is no joined-up thinking whatsoever. It is the same in many areas of environmental law and all other kinds of law. We can make new emergency legislation to deal with the Ukrainians, who are welcome, and extend it for two more years. Just like that, 62 modular homes can be put in with the protection of security forces from outside the State, with assistance from An Garda Síochána, causing great duress, trauma and stress, while another man is evicted. Where is the logic? The fellas with the white coats should come here very soon and bring us all away because we are making the situation much worse for a great many people. Anybody looking in with an objective eye would say that this place has gone loo-lah, as I think it has.

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