Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming to deal with this Commencement matter, as it comes under his Department. I have been concerned for a long time that Housing for All is not as dedicated to rural housing as it should be. While I appreciate that incremental changes are happening they are not fast enough and in my view are not dealing with some of the blockages that are there. When it comes to developers who want to build quality housing schemes, I have examples all over my constituency where developers are prepared to invest to build houses but they are constantly being knocked back on the basis that the wastewater and sewerage systems are not up to standard. I do not know how we are going to deal with this because it will cost billions to upgrade wastewater schemes but it has to happen. There are many facets to addressing the housing crisis. Rural Ireland has a huge role to play when it comes to helping to address the housing crisis.

If we can build houses in towns and villages in rural Ireland, it will be a far better balance in terms of work-life balance, geographical balance and the urban-rural balance and so on. There are rules and regulations, sometimes for good reasons, but there is a lack of common sense in their implementation. In County Clare - and I am sure it is the case in many other constituencies - there is a situation whereby nobody is entitled to build houses on a national secondary road, no matter what, even though there are some scenarios where it just does not make sense to adopt that policy. We are going to have to look at a situation where we give planners a bit more flexibility in that regard. We also have to look at areas where there is particular pressure to ramp up the provision of wastewater and other supports and services. We should be in a position to grant more planning permissions to people in these areas. Of course, there are systems under pressure, but we are under pressure with a housing crisis as well.

Within Housing for All there needs to be a much greater focus on rural Ireland, and a much greater focus on bringing derelict properties back into back into use. The Croí Cónaithe scheme has been hugely successful and I welcome the announcement yesterday by the Department that it is going to allow or facilitate council loans for vacant properties. That is welcome and is a common sense approach. However, much more needs to be done when it comes to escalating the number of homes that are built in towns and villages. Also, we all have to face up to the fact that there are not going to be as many shops in towns and villages as there used to be, so we have to make it financially viable and attractive for people who may have had a shop to convert it into residential accommodation. We also have to look at the whole issue concerning fire officers and people living over the shop. Hundreds of thousands of people in this country lived over the shop for decades. Now we are in a situation where the upstairs area in probably 80% of the retail units in towns and villages in rural Ireland is vacant. They could easily be brought into use. What we need is common sense but what we really need is a much greater focus in the whole area of rural housing as part of Housing for All.