Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I seek a debate on rural housing. I have asked for this on a number of occasions. Why am I doing so again? In the past few days, I attended the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, which met in Kildare. The social and environmental sub-committee, of which I am a member, took evidence over the past two days from many people involved in the sector, from the Office of the Planning Regulator to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and various stakeholders in this sector.

One of the issues that has been continuously raised, and which was raised again in the context of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, since those three jurisdictions were very much central to this debate, is the frustration at the inability of individual farm or land owners, or generations of their families, to do one-off self-builds. One-off self-build houses are not for everybody but many people choose that option or would like to pursue that option because of affordability. We do not need a lecture in this House about affordability and access to houses. Most of these sites are given by family members, so that is half the cost. The second bit with a self-build is that one can build it incrementally over three or four years. The Acting Leader will see in County Kildare how many houses tend to take a few years to complete because there is an issue of cash or finance coming forward.There is a place for self-build one-off houses in Ireland, subject to strict environmental regulations. We need a debate on that and also on another important issue, namely that the Government is operating under 2005 rural planning guidelines. Every rural Deputy, Senator and councillor to whom I speak says it is not working. We need to look again. Despite all the promises it seems that the politicians involved in this area run to the hills. I do not know whether that is because of the political timeline in front of us in the next few months when we will discuss many local issues, but we now renew the call for the Government to publish the new rural planning guidelines for Ireland which apparently are in draft form.