Michelle Mulherin (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I would like to acknowledge the huge body of work that is the action plan for housing and homelessness and to compliment the Minister and all the stakeholders and individuals who have taken a keen interest in this. It is a critical issue. It is good to see that we have this document before us now. The challenge is to drive it on. I have no doubt that is what the Minister intends to do. We know at this stage that it is a complex issue. It involves everything from the standards employed in the construction of housing, which we have to get right, to looking at market forces. In general we do not like to interfere with the market but needs must. We are living in emergency times for all the people without homes, those who are hard-pressed paying high rents and those who cannot buy their own homes. Affordability is an issue. Fundamentally, the question is how we create cohesive communities where individuals and families can grow and thrive. It is more than a house. A house is a home and part of a community.

It often strikes me, coming from my neck of the woods, that there are two sides to the one coin, as is clear in the figures. There are empty houses, schools in danger of closing down or losing teachers, GAA teams unable to field players, and so on. The population in such areas is being depleted. We saw the census figures last week, which showed that counties like Donegal, Sligo and Mayo are losing population. I have no doubt that it is young people who are gone and that they have migrated. Based on the employment figures and their skillsets, they have gone to the big cities. Then one comes to the city and sees severe pressure on services. We have services and facilities, to an extent, in more rural areas, yet we cannot keep people there. There is a huge challenge for spatial planning in this country, so that we do not leave things the way they are and that we intervene with appropriate supports, especially in areas like the west. In terms of investment and growth, we have seen the least growth in that area, notwithstanding efforts in the regional action plan for jobs.

Now that we see continuing growth and employment and continuing increase in Exchequer figures, especially the tax intake, I would like to think we can further support initiatives to develop these areas, which will in turn allow people to stay. People will not have to live on fresh air. No matter how beautiful the area one comes from, while there may be tourism, we need more than that. That is how we are going to fill houses and allow people to sustain their families, especially in rural areas.

I am disappointed in regard to the area of town and village renewal and how it is set out in the plan. The partnership programme for Government contains an ambition to develop a scheme similar to the Living City initiative, which would incentivise businesses and people to move into the urban centres that are covered under that scheme. This is going to be looked at under the Minister's policy document towards the end of the year. If one goes around any of the market towns, practically any of them around the country - it is not just Mayo - it becomes a depressing experience. They are the saddest places. No wonder people are depressed or despairing at times and that is notwithstanding whatever other improvements there are, whether in small indigenous industry jobs, agriculture and so on. When one goes into them, one sees shops shut down and houses shut down and empty. They are like tombstones for a time gone by.

This has been happening since the collapse of the Celtic tiger. Retail has changed and people are shopping online. We have to create a new vision for what these towns and villages will look like. It needs specific intervention. It is past time that we had a proper scheme to repopulate our towns and villages. We need to get people back living in them like we see on the Continent, where they have services and all the rest. This would involve the local authorities and would involve looking after our small independent traders, so there are shops, pubs and restaurants that people can use.This is the least fleshed out part of the proposal before us whereas, to me, it is the most relevant when I go beyond the cities and it is not being addressed. It needs to be done yesterday.