Paul Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would also like to address the housing crisis but from a different angle to some of the previous speakers and a different angle to that from which the debate has been concentrated recently.

It is important that the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government comes to this House to address how difficult it has recently become to get one-off planning permission in rural Ireland. This has come to my attention through personal experience of conversations with members of local authorities who are at the coal face and conversations with Members of both Houses, from all parties and none. I do not know if this is coincidental or the result of concerted effort. The county development plans in different areas have not changed and the conditions of local need have not changed. I have had this conversation with representatives of local authorities all over Ireland outside Dublin and it is the same story everywhere. It is nigh on impossible even when applicants tick all the boxes on local need and have their own family site and access to the funds they need to build the house. It cannot be a coincidence that it is getting harder and harder.

The Minister has the final say on this. The Minister signs off when county councils or local authorities draw up their county development plans or area development plans. If they want to include a variation that the Minister is not happy with it will not be included. The Minister has wrongly been publicly critical of local authorities for not delivering on houses and not building houses. There is a lack of communication between his Department and local authorities to free up people who are prepared to build houses. When people are refused planning permission in their native, local, rural areas, despite having the financial resources to build, they are forced into other settlements. They buy whatever house comes up for sale and that takes that house out of the market for somebody else who does not have the facilities, the land, the site, or the local area knowledge or ties to build a house in a rural area. The Minister must come in here and address this issue. By virtue of the fact that councillors select Senators, there are not too many Senators who would be unable to give him case-by-case examples of it happening in every local authority area.