Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)

I thank the Minister for being here this evening to hear our requests. We need to thank him for the money that has been allocated. People will say there is a budget every day but the budget is about being fair. I know that Government has tried to do its best and to be as fair as possible.

There is a complaint out there in a lot of people's minds that the working-class people, workers with rising costs and everything, were maybe left behind a bit and we need to address the issues of housing. People who want to build their own houses are having severe difficulty.

I will start off with health. In Killarney, we have a new district hospital. It is built. When you allocate all this money to the HSE, it is about following up where the money is going and how it is spent in the individual sectors the HSE is in charge of. We have a new community hospital built in Killarney and the question is, when is it going to open? So much else is dependent on it. We need a primary care centre in Killarney and the grounds are there. If the old district hospital is closed down and patients go into the new one, and the St. Columbanus Home is closed down and is part of the new community hospital, they can be used for things like the primary care centre.

A minor injuries clinic is vital for Killarney. At times, there could be up to 10,000 people in Killarney during the summertime and with regard the amount of pressure that is on the general hospital in Tralee and the accident and emergency at different times, much of that burden could be lightened if we had the minor injuries clinic in Killarney. I am asking seriously for that.

On respite, I have raised respite here several times in this debate already. I feel for the families who are caring for either a brother, sister, mother or father or someone in the family and they cannot get away for one week in the summertime like everybody else, and they really deserve it. While we appreciate what is being done for carers, there should be no means test applied when you are caring for someone. It will be done in the course of this Government and we hope that it will because we have so much need for carers. The country depends so much on carers. The burden on the health budget would be much increased if we do not see after them. When you are a carer, you are actually living the life of the person you are caring for because you have to build your days, hours and minutes around those people. We are not valuing them half enough.

On self-employed people, one part of the jigsaw for them - it has been promised for many years - is when they get sick, they have no allowance or help to look forward to and they have to try and keep the wheels turning, whether it is the wife or the family. We need to see after those people because they are employing workers and keeping their individual projects going. I fear for those people. I am told that even if you have public liability for all your employees, you are actually not covered at all yourself. You cannot get public liability to cover yourself if you are the operator or the man in charge running whatever business it is. You are not covered by public liability yourself.

We could do a lot for housing. In Kerry, there are simple things. We cannot get planning because of this strict urban-generated pressure rule that is depriving so many people who are building houses in their own land. Farmers' sons and daughters are accommodated and listened to but their neighbours next door out in the country, who never lived in a town, are being deprived of planning permission. This would not cost the Government anything. In actual fact, it will get money out of it because the materials they will buy and the tax they will create - income tax or whatever from fellows working - will generate rather than cost money.

Likewise, have over 100 km of national primary routes going through our county. You cannot access a new site, even through an existing entrance, because of the rule that is there since 2012. It was the Minister's predecessor, Leo Varadkar, who brought that in when he was Minister for transport in 2012. On affordable houses in Kerry, we do not have that scheme in Kerry. God almighty, it costs the same to build a house in Kerry as anywhere else and maybe a lot more at times because some parts of Kerry are very remote. It takes a long time, if the Minister can imagine, to go from Killarney to Dingle. It is an hour and a quarter, and the same from Killarney to Cahersiveen, which is another hour and a quarter. If you go back to Valentia Island, it is another three quarters of an hour beyond that and down into the heart of Ballinskelligs there are awful journeys. People are doing great to live in these places at all because they are far away from services. To buy anything, they have to travel half the country. If we came from a place like Deputy Willie Aird, in the middle of the country, if he travelled 75 miles in any direction he would have the whole of the country practically covered but that is not the case in Kerry.

We have a problem in Kenmare. No estate for private housing has been built there in 20 years. The first problem we had was there was not a treatment plant. You could get one-off houses all right, or the local authority got permission to build a few houses but because of our treatment plant being overburdened, there was no permission. Lo and behold now, we have two applications pending, with 169 houses in total. They went out for further information and the question is, where are they going to get the water? I hear that money has been given to Uisce Éireann and I am appealing to the Government to get around this, put shoulders to the wheel and ensure this permission is granted and Uisce Éireann provides the water. They cannot move; the local authority will not give the permission if the volume of water is not increased. I ask the Government to look at that.

We thank the Government for the reduction in the VAT for hospitality. The Minister of State, Deputy Michael Healy-Rae, and I fought very hard for this for the town of Killarney and the impact around the Ring of Kerry. With the great hospitality product we have in our county, we are the leaders in tourism, I would say. I do not think anyone would contradict us on that. We need to protect that for the amount of workers and all that is at stake for the spin-off and the whole lot. We need to keep that. I thought it could be brought in at the start of January.

I am disappointed that it is not and that we have to wait until July. I do not know if all the businesses can hang on. They are thankful for the proposal and hope they can hang on until it comes into place.

I am disappointed with the way vacant houses are being dealt with. I see someone paying rent and the owner of the house only has one or two houses, they do not have a company or anything, and they finish up paying 50% tax. There is no enticement in that. The other problem they have is, if they want their house back in a year or two, they are worried they cannot get them back. We have houses all around us that are vacant and here we are putting a tax on vacant properties. There is an old saying that you cannot get blood out of a turnip. If it is the case that landlords cannot see it is worthwhile to put money into a house, the house depreciates, and it is no longer a vacant house, but becomes a derelict house. I thought we could have a separate tax for rental, which they have in other countries, like 20% rather than these people paying 50%. If the house stays vacant, the Minister will get 0%. I want the Government to look at that.

We have the Ukrainians. It is a great scheme where they are getting €600 paid tax free to the landowner to house them. Can we do something like? We must see after our own people, too. I am asking the Government to look at this because there is any number of vacant houses out there and any amount of people could be housed if we went at it right. I am asking the Government to look at this because the houses are there, which is half the battle, but getting people into them is the other part of it. There is work on that. We will work with the Government if it goes after something like that because the houses are there. We would help tell the story to the house owners and get them to bite the biscuit.

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