Brian Stanley (Laois, Independent)

It has taken a long time to get the Government to accept that there is a housing crisis. The Minister of State's predecessors would not accept it, but I think it is now accepted. We have huge constraints when it comes to water, wastewater and electricity infrastructure. In County Laois, the county I am most familiar with, 13 towns and villages require improved capacity. I will name them. In Portarlington, people have particularly complained to me of the lack of water pressure in Slí na Móna and the Ballymorris Road. Mountrath town, Stradbally, Rathdowney, Ballylynan, Durrow, Killenard, Borris-in-Ossory, Ballinakill, Castletown, Ballybrittas, Newtown and Graiguecullen all require improved capacity.

In wastewater, the situation is even more tricky. There are four towns and villages on amber alert and four on red. The four on red alert are Borris-in-Ossory, Ballinakill, Swan and Timahoe. Those on amber alert include Mountmellick, a substantial town that needs increased capacity, Clonaslee and Arless. This needs to be addressed because we cannot have homes without infrastructure. This is hampering housebuilding in these towns and villages. The Government needs to set out a clear investment plan for County Laois to address this.

I have raised with the Minister of State previously the fact that low-interest loans need to be made available to small builders. We need to activate small builders and developers to build small housing schemes in these towns and villages that would meet much of the demand that is there. Not everybody wants to live in a city. Many of these people work locally and it would save them having to commute. Small schemes could be developed in many of the towns and villages I mentioned.

The Government says that not enough land is zoned for housing. The Minister of State and I know it is not in the right place in some areas, but there is substantial land zoned. The Department has informed me there is 46,300 ha available. That is over 100,000 acres. If you work it out, hundreds of thousands of new houses could be built on this land across the State. In County Laois, 1,145 ha is zoned for mixed use. Assuming 700 ha of that could be used for housing at 20 units per hectare, that would provide 14,000 houses in County Laois alone. There are some places where it is constrained and where land will need to be zoned. Portlaoise is one of those places.

In relation to electricity, the ESB has flagged that demands of data centres will continue to curtail the amount of energy in reserve for housing developments. Over one fifth of the supply is taken up by data centres. I am not completely against them, but we have to have a bit of balance. We cannot expand the number of houses to be delivered in many localities because of our shaky grid and capacity, with overdependence on a few sources of generation. The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland has flagged this, as have the ESB, Uisce Éireann and local councillors.

When he was Minister, I argued with Phil Hogan on the floor of the Dáil about the establishment of Irish Water. I ask the Minister of State to look at the money that went into Irish Water in the past 12 years and think about the fact that if it had been given to local authorities, we would have very good water infrastructure rather than what we have at the moment. We need an investment plan for County Laois, and we need to move on with housebuilding.

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