Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)

I was recently speaking to one of the housing officials in Kerry County Council who described the housing situation in the county as being "like a jungle out there". Rather than doing something about it, the plan from the Government is going to make things worse. The problems with critical infrastructure are so acute that they are preventing the delivery of new homes and are a result of bad planning, mismanagement and underinvestment by successive Governments. This is the fundamental difference with the Government's simplistic plan. It keeps repeating time after time that we just need more units when it knows the situation is way more complex.

In County Kerry, development in too many areas is at a total standstill. In villages such as Ballyduff, Abbeydorney, Fenit, Glenbeigh and Castlegregory there is no wastewater infrastructure or, if there is, it is a 30- or 40-year-old Imhoff tank. Development cannot continue. People in the council, who are working hard and trying to do their best, are paralysed by the lack of direction from the Government, with no serviced sites and no affordable housing plan that they have been instructed to complete. The critical infrastructure deficits are also doing untold damage to the local economy, business activity and tourism development. Even doctors' surgeries cannot be developed because of the lack of money and a plan from the Government. Uisce Éireann wants €2 billion extra. What is happening with that?

We need more grid capacity and we need it fast. However, it is not just about increasing capacity. It is also about who gets priority. Connections to the electricity grid now are done on a first-come, first-served basis. As a result, all the new capacity is being gobbled up by data centres. It does not have to be this way. The regulator in the Netherlands has the power to prioritise new connections for Dutch Government objectives, if the Dutch Government has objectives such as housing. New housing could be first in the queue rather than last, so why have we not done this? Why have we not introduced the necessary legislative infrastructure to make a difference? Housing developments are not proceeding because booming data centre demand has monopolised the new connections. It is time for action in this regard.

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