Aidan Davitt (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. It is nice to see him here today. I missed him. In last year’s St. Patrick’s Day parade we were knocked down with TDs and Senators from Meath but with the redrawn boundaries there were not too many visitors in Castlepollard last time out. That is the way and that is politics.

On a more serious matter, Fine Gael has certainly brought in some good plans which we have welcomed here. We supported one of the most prudent plans, and certainly one that I appreciated most, which was the proposal to bring larger planning permissions directly to An Bord Pleanála. I welcome that. There are quite a lot of initiatives that one would have to welcome but there is one idea that could certainly be pushed out. As we know, the councils have a role to play but a lot of these guys are sitting on large land banks and they are very inactive in that regard. They have the manpower and the resources. They have the natural resource which is the land banks, they have zoned land in many places and they have the manpower to get the planning, get the development in order and to get things moving. Ireland has been noted for, and indeed I grew up in one myself, the 1970s and 1980s grand sized bungalows as they were at the time. They filled the countryside. They are one of the greatest successes of all time in relation to housing, particularly in the countryside, to get people into better standards of housing and to move them out from cottages. We could give people the opportunity to build houses for themselves, particularly in rural areas. They are not looking for a big handout. They are looking for the opportunity to avail of a site. If they are given a site and given the opportunity they will build the houses. They have initiative and they have the skills, with themselves, their neighbours and their extended family and houses would be built, I have no doubt about that. I encourage the Minister of State to look to the councils and to go back to what councils did best; to provide serviced sites for these people and to let them build. What is the big deal?

People could be living in these houses instead of living in rented accommodation which are currently taken up with people on housing assistance payments and all the other different types of schemes. People do not qualify for some of the schemes because landlords can naturally veer towards tenants who are working, as the Minister of State is aware. This can cut out a lot of people who should be entitled to housing from a rental point of view. The Government’s position has been towards rental of houses for people who are on social welfare, housing benefit and who are in receipt of housing assistance payments and the other rental schemes. I would encourage the Minister of State to look at providing sites for these people even if there is a small cost involved. We have the land and we have the natural resource. NAMA has a lot of that resource as we have heard. Perhaps a pilot scheme could be tried. I believe it could be very fruitful and it could be the way forward in rural areas.