Ryan O'Meara (Tipperary North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for being here today. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on such an important issue. The housing crisis is the single greatest issue facing my generation, including young people like me trying to get a start in life, those of us who are still locked out of the property market and living at home, young people moving abroad because they see a better quality of life, a better chance abroad, working families caught in a rental trap or not being able to afford a mortgage, social housing waiting lists and older people or pensioners who are caught renting and worried about their tenure for years to come relying on a pension. I acknowledge the good work that has been done to date in increasing capacity in the system and increasing the number of builds but there are still challenges and we have a long way to go.

I want to speak on a local issue, but more so to highlight the issue in general. Cloughjordan in County Tipperary, where I live, has no capacity in the wastewater treatment plant and as a result we cannot build any homes. I was elected to Tipperary County Council last June as a Fianna Fáil councillor of course. For the previous ten years we had not had a county councillor in our area. The last Fianna Fáil county councillor in the area, Jim Casey, also lives in Cloughjordan. During his final years on the council he was told that this plant was a priority for upgrade; it was in the top two or three to be upgraded. There was a ten-year gap with no county councillor in the area.

Representatives of Irish Water appeared before the council and I asked them for an update on the wastewater treatment plant in Cloughjordan. Irish Water was still at the feasibility stage. They did not know whether to upgrade the plant or build an entirely new one. They told me it would be five to seven years at best to build that medium-sized plant. We are talking about a small town or a large village. Doing the sums, if they were to start right now, which they do not even have an appetite to do, it would take five to seven years. If a 29-year-old living in Cloughjordan wanted get planning permission to build a house, that 29-year-old would probably be 40 years of age before they could build a house in Cloughjordan. All those in my generation are facing the exact same issue. We have two primary schools in Cloughjordan, a Roman Catholic school and a Church of Ireland school. How do we populate those schools? How does our Kilruane MacDonaghs GAA club continue to have hurling and camogie teams for generations coming up along? How do we continue to revitalise a village like that when we cannot build houses?

There is a private estate in the village. The majority of houses are still connected to a developer-led wastewater plant. Some 17 years after that plant was built, none of those houses can be connected into the mains because we have no capacity in the system. The eco village in Cloughjordan is known nationally and internationally. There are dozens of serviced sites there but none of them can be built on because we do not have capacity in the system. No new houses can be built because there is no capacity in the system. There are over 30 people in the small village of Cloughjordan on the housing waiting list. The local authority cannot build any houses because there is no capacity in the system. If commercial units go into old buildings in the village, they have never had a connection onto the system previously. It is a Cromwellian plantation and some of the buildings in the town are very old. Those commercial units cannot get up and running because there is no capacity in the system.

Do we tell all of the young people or anyone who wants a house in Cloughjordan to move and build a house in Nenagh, the nearest town to me? We thought there was capacity for about 300 houses in Nenagh but when the census was done, we realised that the population growth in Nenagh had been far greater than expected. Rather than having capacity for around 300 houses in Nenagh, it now looks like we might not have any capacity at all. That is without a single house being built. A planning application has been submitted for the wastewater plant in Nenagh but it looks like that will not be delivered until about 2029.

Where do we go for my generation to build a house in that area or to get a house in that area? The overall reason I am talking about all of this here today is the time it takes and the lack of urgency by Irish Water and its lack of desire to deliver on these projects. That is the number one barrier to the building of houses in my area. It is the reason I cannot build a house in my own village and why none of my peers can. Affordability is expensive and we need supply to increase to bring back affordability but we cannot even get to that stage until that infrastructure is delivered. These are just two examples in Nenagh and Cloughjordan. I could also mention Ballycommon as another example in north Tipperary. Across the board in rural Ireland this is the reason we cannot build houses in those areas. Irish Water and State agencies just like that need to feel the sense of urgency that we in this Chamber feel. The people who come to me on a daily basis wanting to buy a house or build a house or get a home of their own also need to feel the same level of urgency. I want Irish Water and those State agencies to feel that exact same level of urgency.

I welcome that we secured in the programme for Government the above-the-shop property grant from the Fianna Fáil manifesto. We said we would introduce a grant of €100,000 to bring vacant properties above shop units back into use. We need to act on this urgently. There is massive scope for the rapid delivery of vacant properties above commercial units in our towns and villages. This grant should not be limited to two per individual. In a number of cases we would see, for example, an old pub in rural Ireland that is never realistically going to be a pub again, and its licence might even be gone. The unit, however, would probably be big enough to hold two, three or four apartments in some cases. We need to ensure that we can get a grant for each of those. If it means getting a vacant property up and running and getting people living in, it is worth doing. We also need to consider planning exemptions for that and not letting people get caught up too long in the planning process. For example, over an old shop or a pub there may have been one family unit living in one residential unit and there might be scope for that to become two different residential units. We should not get caught up in unnecessary planning delays because of that. Of course, fire safety will come into it and we have to meet the highest of requirements but we need to get this grant up and running straight away and we need to try to deal with these issues and troubleshoot them before they become an issue in the grant process.

I welcome some of the movements that have been made to date on log cabins or modular homes. I will give an example of a young person in rural Ireland who is taking over the family farm. The price of building at the moment is just prohibitive for them. They might even have invested in the farm and have quite a bit of debt. Building a home straight off the mark might not be an option for them but there might be an option for a log cabin type of build. Maybe that is not the proper terminology to use considering that these units are far more than what we consider a traditional log cabin to be. Planning is far too restrictive for that. I welcome the discussion to date on log cabin units or modular units behind property similar to the planning exemptions in place for extensions but there is scope to go beyond that. If planning requirements can be met, if they can meet their wastewater treatment capacity whether it is a private storage tank or they have connection to a mains supply, and if other services are in place, then in circumstances that deserve planning, we should consider planning permission for those log cabins. There is scope in this regard that would at least give young people a start in life when it comes to having a home of their own.

The first home scheme has not worked as well as it could to date in Tipperary. The cap for the scheme is €350,000 in the county. In County Kilkenny, it is €400,000; in County Limerick, it is €425,000; and in County Waterford, it is €375,000. It is very hard for a Tipperary county councillor, or for anyone, to tell a property developer to come to the county and build a private estate when the cap under the scheme is €350,000. The developers could go to any town or city in those neighbouring counties and very easily be guaranteed a higher price. This is not to say that the cap should be the target but it is not allowing any bit of wriggle room. As a result, we are not seeing the first home scheme take off in the way we should in Tipperary. Those who would develop houses are going to be incentivised to go to the county right next door or just cross the county bounds next door.

I will also touch on the delivery of affordable and social housing. We have seen a great appetite for the delivery of social housing and we need to see much more. Our targets need to be far more ambitious. We are not seeing the same delivery of affordable housing. We have not seen affordable housing schemes take off in Tipperary to date. Let us consider the young couple who may be working and who are above the income threshold for a social home but their income is below what the private market is demanding. They are caught in that trap. We need that affordable housing scheme in place in the likes of Nenagh, Thurles and Roscrea to deliver for those families.

My home was originally a council house built in the 1930s. It is an old house on an acre. My parents bought it in the 1980s and built a home for us from that. I fully acknowledge the need for social housing in this country and I would like to see more of it but we cannot continue to forget about those who are caught in the affordability trap, especially working couples and younger families, who do not qualify for social housing but who need assistance through an affordable scheme.

Finally, I will touch on the four-stage process. I am aware that some work is being done to try to bring it back to a single stage. We are in a housing crisis. We should not be stage after stage waiting for social houses to be built. Local authorities should be given the drive on to deliver the houses we need and not to wade through a bureaucratic mess of report after report and stages where people are not getting the answers we need. We need those houses built, they should be built through a single process and they should be built rapidly by feeling the sense of urgency that we feel in this Chamber to get those houses delivered.

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