Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To move on, Senator Boyhan raised the matter of rural housing. I had the privilege of sitting on Cavan County Council for 20 years. Not a week went by without me hearing the issue being raised. It is a case of back to the future for me to be here in the Seanad Chamber and for it to be raised again. It is no less relevant. In fact, it is becoming more relevant every day. The Senator is right. We need clear rural housing guidelines and we need to build rural houses. I believe we should go back to the practice of building rural social houses, that were historically referred to as rural cottages. In fact, I have a press release out at the moment on the issue. They should be built by local authorities. They ceased building them in latter years. They were a wonderful thing for the balance of communities, for integration and for a thousand reasons.