Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I fully support the Bill. All of us have housing issues around the country. I can only speak about County Carlow. The rents now are extraordinary and people are finding them so hard. We are looking at from €1,600 to €1,700, which is a lot of money. The reason is lack of supply. Carlow is now a university town and while this is brilliant and we welcome it, we need more houses. Recently, the county development plans were done. There were lands zoned and lands dezoned because the Department sent down a directive about it. Were the lands that had services on them made a priority so that it would actually hurry up the build of houses? At the moment we have lands that are zoned with no services, and lands that are serviced and dezoned. The Department needs to look at this. Carlow County Council sought expressions of interest from landowners for the purchase of land for social housing in Carlow town urban area. I was contacted by someone who had permission on his land for eight houses yet the council never came back to him. While this is a really good Bill and I fully support it, we need to look at our county development plans. We need to make sure planning and services are in place so that people can build houses on serviced sites and get them through quickly. That is one of the biggest issues.

I welcome the tenant in situ scheme, which is really important. I have people telling me the council does not have the money to purchase. They qualify for it and should be getting it. While I welcome that we are promoting this, I am told they have come to the Department and there is no funding. I am working on two cases where they are not being purchased. While it is great that we have this Bill, we have to make sure that when we are promoting something and bringing in legislation, the funding is there for it. I really want to find out more about this.

Planning is such a big issue, along with housing and the building of houses, in Carlow. I do not know if funding this year has been on the scale it was on previously. I thank the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, because a week ago, Carlow County Council had no money for housing adaptation grants, for the builds and stuff like that. In fairness, nearly €800,000 was given to Carlow County Council. The issue is that the only thing that can be done on that is roofs and electrical. No persons who have applied for windows and doors can get their grants. How do we get more funding into Carlow County Council? How do we solve this? How do we look at building more houses? Now that we are a university town and county, we need to put in plans for student accommodation. We need to have the serviced sites. We need to work with Carlow County Council. In fairness to the council, it has been working really hard, for example on building local authority houses.

We need far more affordable houses, of course. We need to build more affordable housing.

So many parents come to me saying their children do not qualify for the council housing list or for a mortgage and ask whether we can look at getting more affordable houses. That is the road to go down. The more we build, the better it will be. People are falling between not being able to get a mortgage and not being able to go onto the local authority housing list. I know that things change and that, over the years, we have perhaps moved into more of a culture of renting, but in Ireland we always bought our own homes and encouraged that. If there is a lack of supply, we need to build houses.

Earlier I attended a presentation on a survey relating to elderly people and their concerns. Approximately 25% of the respondents to the survey had indicated that a family member had come back home to live with them because they could not buy or rent a house. While these people, who were elderly, were glad to have their family member back, we do not want it to be the case that nobody can either get a mortgage or go onto the local authority housing list, and I am told there is now no funding for the tenant in situ scheme.

What funding is there for these houses? What else can we do? We have done a lot, and I compliment the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, the Minister of State and the team. A lot of good work has been done. More houses have been built now than have ever been built but that has been the case only in the past few years. The couples and families I am dealing with say they just want to own their own home, go onto the local authority list or get a mortgage. While the Bill is a good step and I really welcome it, we have a lot more to do.

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