Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)

The amending legislation being introduced this evening is quite ironic in that it is amending legislation that has not yet been commenced. This is one of the key Opposition criticisms. We spent many months last year on planning and development legislation. It was the biggest Bill ever to come before the House and here we are back again amending it.

The biggest issue I have with the Bill before us is the narrative it portrays, namely that the housing problem across the country is because of planning permission issues and people objecting. These are not the reasons we have a problem with housing across the country.

That narrative lets Government off the hook and Government conveniently continues to grab onto it as being the reason for the problems. Builders, people on the ground and even people in the local authorities will all say the same thing. In many cases the problems they have are with services. There are an awful lot of plots of land around the country where they want to build houses. There are towns in my constituency where we could build houses and where the local authority owns land and could build local authority houses, but cannot do so because Uisce Éireann has not got the services up to scratch. There are no sewerage or water systems available in those areas. It is the same across the State.

We also have an issue with financing. The recent announcement that we are going to see a reduction in size of the already very small and cramped apartments across the State to somehow or other make them cheaper is a hugely retrograde step. The problem we have with financing all aspects of our housing is that the banks are not lending to the builders. That is the problem. An ordinary builder cannot go to a bank and get money to build ten, 50 or 100 houses. They simply cannot get it. They have to go to these other funds, which lend at exorbitant rates. They cannot possibly hope to be able to fund that. That is putting a stranglehold on houses being built. It is pushing up prices because it is removing any competition between the builders and developers and huge interest rates are being charged on the money.

The legislation on judicial reviews and so on is fair enough. We accept there has to a brake put on that at times. However, to suggest it is the reason we have a problem is totally false. The reason we have a problem is that Government has not taken action to ensure we have services in place to enable us to build houses and finance in place so the builders can get the money to build.

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