Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent Ireland Party) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge Richie Herlihy and his friend Paul Lenihan who are in the Gallery. I welcome them to the Dáil.

We can do all the frameworks we like with all the best of intentions but unless you have the infrastructure, you can build nothing. I will provide the Minister of State with an example of an application that is with Uisce Éireann at the moment. There are 42 houses to be built in Pallaskenry. I will ask for the Minister of State's help with this. All that is needed is an A4 page stating that there is capacity in the sewerage system. This is delaying the building of 42 houses in Pallaskenry. I have been on to Uisce Éireann and our local county council. The executive met with Uisce Éireann, which said it would be looked into. It has taken a month for Uisce Éireann to look into an A4 page. I sent it the last one it issued. It has expired but Uisce Éireann just needs to change the date on it and send it back. This is holding up 42 houses. How are we going to build houses for people if we have this type of delay? It is the same thing in Croom. Infrastructure is key if you want to build houses. Some 60 houses in Croom were held up for six months due to Uisce Éireann. It was not all its fault. When the local authorities handed stuff over to Uisce Éireann, they delayed because they did not realise they had given commitments to people building houses before the handover. There was a lack of communication.

On people building one-off houses, everyone should have the right to live where they grew up. If there is adequate land, road frontage, visibility and percolation, people should be allowed to build. In a town, you can put 15 houses into half an acre. However, if somebody wants to build a house in the county, they are told they need half an acre. With the new guidelines, people can build a second house of up to 400 sq. ft or 40 sq. m on the same property if somebody wants to downsize, for example. If somebody in a family wants to downsize, 400 sq. ft means only 20 ft each side of a square. We should be allowed to build something a little bit bigger on a half-acre site, especially if we can build 15 or 16 houses in the same area in a town, city or village. In the county, the Government says we can only build one but that we might be able to put in another building of 400 sq. ft afterwards. We need to make sure we can invite our people to come home. If they want to build their own houses and put a roof over their own heads, that comes at no cost to the State.

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