Danny Healy-Rae: Planning Needed to Stop Youth Exodus

Thank you very much Lascar Comhairle. Tánaiste, as you might be aware yourself, many young people are leaving our shores from the age of 25 to 33. Many in good settled jobs, guards, teachers, mechanics, different type of people, all different trades and valuable people, they're leaving because they simply believe that they can't get to the point where they can buy or build a house for themselves. They say that maybe if they were not working at all, or working only part time, they would qualify to get on the local authority list and eventually get a social housing unit. In other words, they're saying to us that there's no incentive for them to continue working in Ireland. I hope that the new planning bill will go far enough to ensure, there's a lot of talk about it coming shortly, it can't come quick enough, that people can get permission to build houses nearer in their own locality and that they will be allowed to come out onto national primary and secondary roads where it's safe and where there already is an existing exit. Here, encouraging our own people to come home from Australia, Canada and the United Arab Emirates and everywhere else, nurses, mechanics and nurses, all people with good qualifications, and to halt the flow of the present crop of boys and girls who are leaving in their drawers in the first instance. Both things will be achieved if we get the planning right. Myself and indeed others, many others, have been asking and looking for the planning to be made relevant and easier for many years. The other problem is the mortgage. To qualify for a mortgage, you can borrow four times the combined gross annual income of up to 90% of the value of the property. You see, that's a big problem for many, and they need to approve for steady employment for at least 12 months and a deposit of 10%. You see, most mortgages now, because of their massive cost of taking 30 to 35 years to pay back, many people will have reached pension age before they will be fully on their houses. In the UK, there is no vet on building materials. Why can't Ireland be the same? The cost of the actual building is increased by one tonne in tax, VAT and other levies. There should be also an incentive to build smaller houses, and in Kerry, the cost of building a new house is 220 to 280 square foot, which means that the type of house that's being built at the present time is costing somewhere between 280,000 to be built. On top of the site, you're moving on for 400,000 before the house is complete. I'm asking you to look at these things to stop the people from leaving our shores. Thanks, Deputy, thank you very much for the question on housing, and how I suppose we give our young people hope in terms of the ability to own, or indeed in some cases build, their own home. I suppose two points that I would make. Firstly, and I don't say this in any way disrespectfully to you, but taxes are an important part of funding the state, and we can't just reduce or abolish them all. We have taken a number of measures recently to reduce the cost of construction and to try and assist around viability, but we've also taken a number of measures on the tax side, particularly the Help to Buy scheme, which has literally helped tens of thousands of people get some of their own tax back towards a deposit for their home. That's a scheme we're very committed to as a government and committed to keeping in place until the end of the mandate of this government. There's points you make in relation to mortgages and the amount you can borrow, and these are issues that I genuinely hear from people, but what I would say I suppose is we also have to get the balance right, because we don't want to arrive back at a place where we were in the past as a country with a very, very high level of mortgage indebtedness and the difficulty that arises from that. But we have a number of schemes in place in the government, we've commitments in the programme for government to keep them under review as well. Can I say though on the issue of rural housing, I mean we've got to do more here and we've got to make sure that people have an ability to be able to live in their own community. It's a really important part of balanced regional development, it's a really important part of regeneration of rural communities, and we've got to get it right too. It's not about a free-for-all, entirely not. It's certainly not about people from one part of the country building a holiday home and the other, but it is about people who have a social and economic connection with the community being able to live in their own community and build their own home. It's about people who aren't asking the government to do anything other than allow them to build their own home. And up until now, if we're being honest, the rules have been inconsistent, the rules depend on whether you live in this county or that county or the other county, that's not fair. This is a small country, it's a small island, we need to have a consistent approach to rural planning guidelines, and the intention now is to have a new national planning statement on rural housing being prepared under section 25 of the Planning and Development Act, which will ultimately require government approval and then will be issued by the Minister for Housing, and the new statement will refine, will update and will replace the existing guidelines as well. It'll provide more clarity and more consistency across the planning authorities by defining where and how rural housing can be developed, and I believe it'll make it easier for people, for young people, to be able to build a home in their own community, and I think the benefits of that socially and economically to rural Ireland, including to parts of County Kerry, will be significant as well. We need to facilitate rural housing for those with a local housing need where they need to live or work in a rural area, and of course we always have to balance that with protecting the rural character of countryside and preventing urban generation sprawl as well. So I'm really looking forward to these new national planning statements coming to government very shortly, and I think it'll be a significant benefit to rural communities. Honestly, for your reply, look, the other thing is the birth rate is falling, yet our population is going up. Over 500,000 our population increased in the last, in recent years, and this is putting pressure on house availability. Many vacant houses, there's no real incentive available to owners to rent them out, but there is an incentive there, and it is working for the Ukrainian people, where there's 600 being paid tax-free to the landlord. If we could do something for that, like that for some of our own people, it would be great for our own people. People coming from other parts of the world are very welcome to come here, if they're coming here to work, but it should never be the case that they can come in here, get on a payment right away, get on the social housing list, and compete with our own people who are born and reared here. We'll see after our own people first, and I just need to clarify, honestly, I said that the cost of a house in Kerry was 280 to 280, I mean 220 to 280 per square foot to build, so when you add that up, that goes over 400,000, and I'm saying too many people are having trouble getting the mortgage in the first place, and we need to do something about that, please. I always believe in an honest debate around migration, and I think it's important in our countries, but the honest debate has to be grounded in facts. People who arrive in Ireland from abroad, through a variety of circumstances, do not have an automatic right to social housing, and indeed, Minister, you know that too, and you know that in Kerry as well, and people from Ukraine, please, and people from Ukraine contribute very significantly to our economy as well, obviously do have the right to work, and indeed there's many businesses around this country who tell me how reliant, please don't heckle me, please don't heckle me on this, because we have to be respectful when we debate these issues. The government is making a number of changes in relation to Ukrainian accommodation, and some of the issues you highlighted, because we do need, in our view, to make the model sustainable, because we want to be able to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes, and the emergency approach that we've had to date does need to be replaced with a more sustainable approach, and that's how we're going to do it, but I do just want to, in saying that, acknowledge the positive contribution that Ukrainian people are making. As you pointed out, many people coming to Ireland and working in this country as well. I would just say, in relation to the issue of vacant homes, we have already seen 20,000 homes back in use via the vacant property grant. We are bringing in a new derelict property tax, we'll do that in the next budget as well, and we have also expanded grants for shop conversions. I think the issue of vacancy and dereliction in a housing emergency is rightly identified by you as a key issue which we want to make more progress on.