Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)

I thank Deputy Michael Collins and his group for tabling this motion and giving us all an opportunity to talk about housing and discuss it as much as we can to see if we can help. This is one of many motions, Bills and whatever trying to address housing, but we really need to get down to work and see after the people to ensure that everyone has a home. The answer has to be to build more local authority houses at a standard size. We should not try to stop people from doing Airbnb. I do not believe that we will achieve or get any house back from Airbnb because the first thing we have to realise is that anyone who has sat doing Airbnb for more than seven years has planning for that by default and does not have to go for planning. Even the ones who have been at it for three or four years do not intend to give back their houses for long-term letting.

Vacant houses are another way we could achieve housing. Incentivise the owners to rent them out. There are so many vacant houses everywhere. Do something like giving householders who house Ukrainian refugees €600 tax-free, which was previously €800. That is being paid by the State. The people who I envisage would be renting and paying for the houses themselves and the landlord could get €600 tax-free. That is a laudable way to try to get people to rent out their vacant properties.

Planning should be granted to all those who want to build a house for themselves on sites. We have many problems in Kerry with the strict urban generated pressure rule, where people cannot access national primary or national secondary routes because of blockages by the Department, even though there is access there already. Reduce the VAT on building supplies for new houses and repairing vacant properties. Land that is serviced is another problem that is manifesting itself now. Where you have people who want to zone their lands, they are afraid to do so in the Killarney area, where the plan is being developed at present. They are afraid to zone their lands because they would be liable for the residential zoned land tax. That is unfair because they do not know who, if anyone, will buy their site or the place they want to sell, and they will be landed with a 10% tax every year until the value of the property is gone.

I am asking, where land is serviced with sewers, water and the ESB, that people should be able to put in a planning application on that basis to see if it jumps the hurdle and meets the requirements of the local authority's planning section rather than having it zoned. Zoning is complicated and is made more complicated by the residential zoned land tax. It will hurt many people and it will hurt our achievements in building houses because if it is not zoned, you cannot build in it, and if people zone it and do not get someone to purchase it, they are taxed. Builders are having serious problems in accessing money to build the houses. They must build them to a turnkey state and carry the cost of building the house from day one until the day it is finished. That is not fair either because there have been staged payments before and that is not allowed or happening any more, except for voluntary housing bodies. How is it working for one section and not for people who want to build a few houses? We always had builders close by around us, building 17, 18 or maybe 20 houses a year in different towns and villages. That is not happening anymore because builders cannot get off the ground. They have to carry the total cost of building the house themselves. That is wrong as well and the banks are putting in so many restrictions.

We need, at secondary school level, to try to encourage youngsters, both boys and girls, to go into the trades. It is grand to say to go to college and get an education but we need people to work on the ground. We need electricians, blocklayers, plasterers and carpenters. We need some incentive or advice for the youngsters leaving secondary school that there is work for them and to go into those trades, do those apprenticeships and get the experiences that they need to go into building houses because if we do not have builders, we will not have houses and it is looking that way. In our neck of the woods, a few older fellows are still at it and we do not seem to have enough young builders coming on stream.

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