Michael Collins (Cork South-West, Independent Ireland Party)

Independent Ireland welcomes this Bill. It is a short and narrow Bill but it will be an important one if it keeps the wheel turning for social and affordable housing. Independent Ireland will always support a measure that lets councils and housing bodies keep building but, let us be honest, this is a technical fix, not a housing plan.

What is the Minister of State's plan? Today, I do not see anything different from what I have seen in the past nine years. Up to 5,000 children are now homeless and 16,000 people in total are without a home. Where is the long-proposed exemption for detached cabin homes annexed to existing dwellings? Is the proposal that is yet to come before us for approval to increase the floor area to 45 sq. m? I think that is adequate if properly designed. However, the worrying factor is that such a building will have to be at the rear of the existing building. In many cases, the site layout will not allow for this due to boundaries being too close to the rear of the house. Where this is the case, exemptions should extend to either side of the dwelling, provided the cabins are not higher than a single storey and are authorised locally and not by the planning authority. This is where things will get done. If this does not happen, the legislation will favour some but not all. That is the problem with a lot of legislation; it suits some people but it does not suit quite a lot of people.

The housing crisis is a national emergency. I am truly frustrated by the lack of sincere effort made by successive Governments on planning. Of the last two issues I dealt with, one was about planning permission in west Cork and the other was a housing issue in west Cork. Someone has been on a housing list for 18 or 19 years and cannot get a house. That shows the crisis that exists. Week in and week out, people come to my office pleading for planning permission and the reasons for refusal are simply shocking. The Government has to change the planning guidelines that are given to the planners because whatever way they are being read, they are saying, "No. No. No." to the applicants. The Minister of State comes from a rural area, so he must deal with the same problems as I do. Surely be to God it is no different. I expect him to feed into the idea that the planning guidelines need to be completely changed and looked at sincerely.

Genuine people who can build their own houses, pay for their own houses and get a mortgage and have everything going for them are being refused. I have seen situations where there are a load of houses and people are told theirs is too high. There are eight or ten houses behind them, most of which are holiday homes, and they were able to get planning permission. That gives the likes of me a kick in the backside, because people ask how the holiday homes got planning permission when they are living in the locality and are refused. There seems to be one law for one group and another law for another group. Will the Minister of State look at those reasons because people's whole lives are being destroyed by spending a year or two years trying to get planning permission and then being refused?

Am I right that my time is up?

See this speech in context