Danny Healy-Rae
Kerry · Independent · Ireland
“I am glad to get the opportunity to talk about post offices. First of all, I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Charlie McConalogue, and the Government for giving them financial assistance this year because they do need it. Like every other Member, I appreciate our post office network.”
“People should not be sent elsewhere to bigger towns because there are no longer banks in villages and it is very important for people to meet. Social interaction is so important with people. People are becoming very lonely in rural places because they do not meet as much as they used to at the creamery, the shop or the pub.”
“I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this Bill and giving us the chance to discuss the possibility of a united Ireland. Since I was a young fella, all I ever heard was that was what we needed and that we could not stop until it was achieved. There is so much involved in this.”
“We hope that we will retain the post offices because as has been said here, the post office, the school and the GAA club are so vital for retaining the identity of parishes throughout the length and breadth of rural Ireland. We hope we will retain the post offices in Kilgarvan, Kenmare and Glenflesk.”
“We want that for the people of the North of Ireland as well but we must have the conversation as to what will be the story for all the different things. We must be united in this Chamber and the people of the Twenty-Six Counties must, by and large, be in favour of reunification. We need to hear their views.”
“We must be united here in this Chamber for a start, each and every one of us. We cannot be throwing Scud missiles across the Chamber at each other. We need to have a united front. This is a serious business. We need to know where this will lead us.”
The complete record
Every one of 737 lines we hold for Danny Healy-Rae, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 12 of 15.
“I am glad to get the opportunity to talk on this important matter to allow an extension of time for planning developments that are held up for one reason or another. Indeed, we had this facility a few years ago, where applicants could get a second five years if they looked for it. The then Minister, in his wisdom, decided to stop that because he felt that developers were hoarding land, benefiting from time and gaining money without building any house. I hope that does not happen with this. It should be for people who have started or who intend to start and are coming to building the houses. Certainly, it hurt people with one-off houses badly when this extension of time of a second five years, was taken away from them a few years ago and I am glad that something like that is coming back now.”
“What happens in a lot of cases is that these people have to return to hospital. That is another reason our beds are full in our hospitals. That happens because the home helps are not in place and it is terrible. One of the reasons I decided to support the Government is that it said it would get rid of the means test. I am looking forward to that and to helping the carers of Ireland, because they are the massive people who do Trojan work-----”
“It is where people come to sleep with elderly people, not in the beds with them, but in the house to be there for the whole long night and stay until the morning. They should be rewarded better than they are. Families have to pay for that themselves. The State should intervene. We are talking about people who are trying to stay in their homes for as long as possible. We should strive to develop a system like the model in Denmark, where people are looked after in their homes. We see too often when people are awarded home help - on leaving the hospital, they are told they qualify for home help - that then there is no home help available. The staff are not to be found. That is an awful time for families. The help should be there the minute they land at home or the following days. They should not have to wait.”
“They have a different model. They have to make the thing pay. They are not like Mother Teresa. I worry about the system where public nursing homes are getting more funding than private nursing homes. It costs the same to operate the bed or room. They should get the same funding. There should be no excuse at any time to mistreat or treat badly elderly people. They are the people who got us to where we are today, people who strived day in and day out to rear families, keep employees going, provide homes for their families and so forth. Surely they deserve the Government's best to ensure they are properly looked after by carers and home helps. There is another dimension that is valuable and is not appreciated enough.”
“He said a nursing home was kind of a departure lounge and that when people go into one, there is not much hope of coming out again. That was one of the things he felt and said. For many people, when they are not improving, not getting better but getting worse, families have to make the decision. Many people keep their loved ones at home and they should get more help to do so. The Denmark model is that there are hardly any nursing homes in Denmark. We should strive to better our home care system and it would save us a lot of money. At present, I am hurt by what we saw on RTÉ. There are a lot of great nursing homes, including family-run nursing homes. We have them in Kenmare, Killarney and other places. We are lucky enough in Kerry that we did not have them, but I worry about the big business companies that own a number of nursing homes.”
“First, I thank the Labour Party for giving us the opportunity to talk about this important topic. It is an emotive subject when families have to make the decision to put someone into a nursing home. I vividly remember when my father was not great and a decision had to be made. I am glad we were able to keep him in his own home with Kathleen Fitzgerald. I thank all the people, including Noreen Sullivan, Jackie Ahern and William Leary. I will leave people out and I am sad about that but I thank all the people who helped him in his final days. He died in Tralee hospital and I thank the staff there and the staff in Killarney district hospital for the great attention and care they gave him every hour and day he was there. They are wonderful people and we want to thank them. We will never forget them.”
“We hope and expect it will go well. I ask that the €3 million proposed for use on this roundabout and these changes be added to the outer bypass. If it cannot be spent there, spend it on the 650 local improvement scheme applicants waiting for ten years or more.”
“We must prioritise to ensure lorries, buses, commercial vehicles, cars and all the vehicles going through this roundabout at present continue to use this road as they have to the best of their ability. We are very worried that traffic lights will impede this. We all know if you change the system from a roundabout to traffic lights, you slow the whole thing down. Instead of being backed up three or four miles out the Cork road and three miles out the Tralee road, it will be much farther and complete chaos will ensue. I ask that whatever consultants were being dealt with put in temporary lights for a week or two - preferably two - to see how the thing manages before they remove the roundabout. When they remove the roundabout, it will be too late. We will not have the other bypass for six or seven years yet, with everything going well.”
“I thank the Minister of State for his reply. He referred to roads that were under construction or near it. This is not under construction. Planning has not yet been granted. It is at the planning stage at present. Anyone who wants to make a submission needs to make it before Friday evening. The people of Kerry need to know what is happening because this will create chaos. The Minister of State spoke about narrowing the road to 7 m. We have been told 6 m. As I said, this went through Kerry County Council at an earlier stage. Maura Healy-Rae was the only councillor who voted against it and she will continue to do so. Perhaps the others will see now, because they are getting a second bite of the cherry, that this is wrong and the wrong time. When the outer bypass is built, this will be fine.”
“I am asking the Department of Transport go down, talk and look at this project with the officials, if they are involved, and-----”
“Temporary traffic lights should be put there for a week or two - it should be two weeks - to ensure that they will work and we will not have a complete disaster. We are bad enough with traffic in Killarney as it is. A similar project has been carried out in Fossa, where they narrowed the road. Two large vehicles when they meet there cannot pass each other without stopping up altogether and trying to inch their way past each other, what with mirrors and everything sticking out. It is not right to do that. That is the N72, the national secondary road. What we are talking about here is the national primary road, and to do this is very serious. Maura Healy-Rae has asked for the temporary lights to be placed before the work is undertaken.”
“I suggest it will cost a lot more. It is premature. What we need now is to build an outer bypass, which we have been campaigning for for 24 or 25 years. We have been promised €3 million for this year to progress that and to bypass the town, starting outside at Lissivigeen, going northwards west through Kilcummin and coming out in Farranfore, bypassing the whole lot. All of what is proposed now would be fine if that were done first, but it must be remembered that the roundabout to be taken away is on the N22, the national primary road into Killarney and the rest of Kerry. Before this project goes ahead, I ask that temporary traffic lights be placed at every point where it is suggested there will be traffic lights, and at the roundabout especially.”
“Even at that, the queues can be 3 miles or 4 miles backed up on either side coming in from the Cork Road or coming in from the Tralee Road into Killarney, or indeed coming up to Dr. Hans Liebherr Road if people are coming from Killorglin. Now, under active travel, which the previous Government had in place, the present Government proposes to take away the roundabout and instead put five or six sets of traffic lights there on either side of the road and down to the Ballycasheen junction, where people come in from the Cork side. Two sets of cycleways and footpaths are also proposed - there are footpaths there already - and it is proposed to narrow the carriageway to 6 m, which I contend is not wide enough for the vehicles we have today. A suggested €3 million, TII locally and the council say, is to be spent on it.”
“I am glad to get the opportunity to raise this matter in the Chamber. First, I have to explain the present setup. The national primary road coming into Killarney from the Cork side is a very busy road as it is. It goes through what we know locally as Daly's roundabout and then carries on to the old bypass, which has been built for over 50 years, to Tralee, Killorglin, all of mid-Kerry and wherever you want to go after that. Approximately 40,000 vehicles go through that roundabout each day, maybe 18,000 or 19,000 into Killarney town and 21,000 on to the other places I mentioned. The roundabout itself works perfectly. Most times when people reach it, they may have to queue to get from one side to the other. Then they get relief when they go through the bypass. It works perfectly. I never see it clogged or blocked.”
“It would be an attraction for all those who learn going to school what those leaders went through. I do not think it should be commercialised by any entity but the State should have some kind of heritage things there. Whatever way the State could help to fund and maintain it would be fine but selling some other commercial stuff would not be in line with remembering it as it was. It is sad to see people fighting here over what should be done with it. We should try to work together to ensure it is nice and that the people who fought there in 1916 are remembered properly.”
“I am glad to get the opportunity to talk on this motion this evening. To start, we all have to honour, respect and remember those leaders, men and women who fought for our country in 1916 and around that time, including during the Civil War, and all those who died along the way so we could be here having our own democratic Parliament. Everyone is entitled to talk and say what they believe in here. My ideal for the GPO would be to maintain it as far as possible and to modernise and develop it. I am sure we need to keep some section of a post office there as part of what it was at that time and to maintain much of what is there. I know it has to be modernised but we should develop it into a modern-type visitor centre where we would attract all our own people, including those from all over the world wherever they have gone to.”
“We all know that when a child presents with special needs and needs special assistance, it places a massive burden on his or her parents. The parents would prefer to see something wrong with themselves rather than their child. The Minister of State and I know that we do not need reports. We need funding. We need more specialist teachers and places and we need to speed up the assessment of need process because early intervention is paramount when dealing with these children. It needs to be addressed at as young an age as possible. Kerry seems to be hit very badly. I am sure we all get representations. The Minister of State knows the story. I am not saying anything much about the report because we do not need it. What we need is action. I am depending on the Minister of State to carry out that action as Minister with this portfolio.”
“We need some incentive or advice for the youngsters leaving secondary school that there is work for them and to go into those trades, do those apprenticeships and get the experiences that they need to go into building houses because if we do not have builders, we will not have houses and it is looking that way. In our neck of the woods, a few older fellows are still at it and we do not seem to have enough young builders coming on stream.”
“That is not fair either because there have been staged payments before and that is not allowed or happening any more, except for voluntary housing bodies. How is it working for one section and not for people who want to build a few houses? We always had builders close by around us, building 17, 18 or maybe 20 houses a year in different towns and villages. That is not happening anymore because builders cannot get off the ground. They have to carry the total cost of building the house themselves. That is wrong as well and the banks are putting in so many restrictions. We need, at secondary school level, to try to encourage youngsters, both boys and girls, to go into the trades. It is grand to say to go to college and get an education but we need people to work on the ground. We need electricians, blocklayers, plasterers and carpenters.”
“I am asking, where land is serviced with sewers, water and the ESB, that people should be able to put in a planning application on that basis to see if it jumps the hurdle and meets the requirements of the local authority's planning section rather than having it zoned. Zoning is complicated and is made more complicated by the residential zoned land tax. It will hurt many people and it will hurt our achievements in building houses because if it is not zoned, you cannot build in it, and if people zone it and do not get someone to purchase it, they are taxed. Builders are having serious problems in accessing money to build the houses. They must build them to a turnkey state and carry the cost of building the house from day one until the day it is finished.”
“We have many problems in Kerry with the strict urban generated pressure rule, where people cannot access national primary or national secondary routes because of blockages by the Department, even though there is access there already. Reduce the VAT on building supplies for new houses and repairing vacant properties. Land that is serviced is another problem that is manifesting itself now. Where you have people who want to zone their lands, they are afraid to do so in the Killarney area, where the plan is being developed at present. They are afraid to zone their lands because they would be liable for the residential zoned land tax. That is unfair because they do not know who, if anyone, will buy their site or the place they want to sell, and they will be landed with a 10% tax every year until the value of the property is gone.”
“Even the ones who have been at it for three or four years do not intend to give back their houses for long-term letting. Vacant houses are another way we could achieve housing. Incentivise the owners to rent them out. There are so many vacant houses everywhere. Do something like giving householders who house Ukrainian refugees €600 tax-free, which was previously €800. That is being paid by the State. The people who I envisage would be renting and paying for the houses themselves and the landlord could get €600 tax-free. That is a laudable way to try to get people to rent out their vacant properties. Planning should be granted to all those who want to build a house for themselves on sites.”
“I thank Deputy Michael Collins and his group for tabling this motion and giving us all an opportunity to talk about housing and discuss it as much as we can to see if we can help. This is one of many motions, Bills and whatever trying to address housing, but we really need to get down to work and see after the people to ensure that everyone has a home. The answer has to be to build more local authority houses at a standard size. We should not try to stop people from doing Airbnb. I do not believe that we will achieve or get any house back from Airbnb because the first thing we have to realise is that anyone who has sat doing Airbnb for more than seven years has planning for that by default and does not have to go for planning.”
“We need to get more transparency for our people down here because I have no doubt they will be asking us a lot of questions in the coming days. We need to have some kind of an answer for them and we are depending on the Government to give us that answer.”
“It is a very laudable idea, and there is no denying that the people of the North, of those Six Counties, fought to be free and to be under Irish control as well as any of those who came before us and fought here in the South of Ireland. They were instrumental and did their part on every occasion. Therefore, we cannot deny them, if that is what they want, but we need to hear from their side that that is what they want. There is a democratic system up there in the Six Counties as well as there is here. It will need more direction and more involvement with the two Governments. The Irish Government and the UK Government and the Stormont Assembly need to get together and see how this will go forward. It would be nice to see that happening. It is a good idea but we need to get some idea of how long it is going to take.”
“We appreciate that because it helps people here in the South of Ireland to be with their elderly people going up to get their cataracts removed. Indeed, I was glad to be able to help a young foreign boy who was in Killarney. He was only nine years of age and he had to get his cataracts removed. He was about to go blind. It was only in Kingsbridge Private Hospital that I could get this done and I was very glad and proud to do that. There are so many things to be considered. How will it be carried out? Who will be in charge of the ballot boxes up there? Will the UK Government and the powers that be up there facilitate this happening? We have to consider that. There are a lot of issues surrounding this.”
“On the other side, for the past eight years Deputy Collins, Deputy Michael Healy-Rae and myself have taken a lot of people to Kingsbridge Private Hospital to get their cataracts removed and to get hips and knees replaced, and we are still doing it. The hospital provides a great service up there. It is immediate. People need to get the operation before they lose their sight. If they had to remain in the South of Ireland and depend on getting through the waiting list, many of them would go blind before their cataracts were removed, and that is a sad reflection. What we see happening up there is that the hospitals work all around the clock. They work the seven days and provide the service on Saturdays and Sundays, the very same as if it was Monday.”
“There seems to be a lot of immigrants coming from the UK through Northern Ireland and slipping down here. It creates a lot of issues for housing and social welfare and it is mucking things up. We have a new Minister for justice now who seems to be gaining control and trying to manage this. He has already made a good start and we are depending on the Minister to keep going. What I know from my dealings with people from the North of Ireland, whether it was in marts around Kerry - in Cahersiveen, Castleisland or Kenmare - is that they are very honourable people. They come down here to buy cattle and they pay for our cattle and our sheep.”
“I thank Sinn Féin for opening up this debate and giving us the opportunity to talk on this important matter. Yes, Ireland consists of Thirty-two Counties, not Twenty-six Counties. We need to know more from the Government as to what it means by not opposing this motion. The Government needs to be more transparent as to what it believes, what it is thinking of, how this will be done or when will it be initiated. When will we make a start? Will there have to be a referendum? Our own people will have to be consulted. Will the people in the North have to be consulted? Will they get a chance to decide whether they want to vote for an Irish President just for the Twenty-six Counties? That might be an issue for them as well as for people down here. There are a lot of issues around immigration; Deputy McGrath mentioned them.”
“Like everyone else, I was horrified by the "Prime Time" exposé. We have great nursing homes, both public and private, in County Kerry. We have great staff. They are second to none and do their very best. I cannot understand why different rates are paid to public and private nursing homes. I cannot understand that. There is no better place for elderly people to age than at home. We should strive to bring more of that model in here. That is the model in places like Denmark. They are better off staying in their own homes for as long as possible. When that fails, they have to go to a nursing home because they need special care. There needs to be accountability but HIQA is apparently only looking at buildings, doors and windows and not at the people themselves. That is very important. Old people brought us to where we are today.”
“We looked for a connecting bridge so that people would not have to go out on the street and down by the Great Southern Killarney with bags and everything, but we were told there was no funding for that. I ask the Minister to look at this again.”
“I am glad to get the opportunity to speak. We have more public transport at the present time. There is a service from Kenmare through to Kilgarvan to Killarney that is great, but maybe a medium-sized bus would suffice rather than the large bus it has. Maybe we could get more bus stops. We need more bus stops because it is not much good to have a bus passing by when people are waiting by the side of road who cannot be picked up because they are too far away from the bus stops we have. The local authority needs to combine with and assist the Department of Transport to provide these bus stops. Places like Clonkeen are having difficulty getting access to public transport. I wish to raise another issue. In Killarney, the train station is on one side of the railway platform. The bus station is on the other side of the rail track.”
“I am concerned about that. Is there any way that those people can be accommodated? Some people feel aggrieved that they were not considered in the first place because they were in neither of the three categories that were outlined at the start. Many people are facing fierce financial pressure at the moment. I know the Government is also under tremendous pressure but these people are the backbone of rural communities. Sadly, some of them have departed the scene. Last year, many small companies could not carry on. I wonder whether the grant would have helped them. I am sure it would. Will the Minister of State consider reopening the scheme to accommodate those who have been left out?”
“I thank the Minister of State, but I am a bit confused now. First, I thank the Government for bringing in these two schemes. I also thank my local authority and all of the local authorities around the country for the great work they did in delivering those grants to the people involved who had applied. The Minister of State has just said that the local authorities are working through the misclassified applications at the moment but my local authority has said that it has not heard anything about the appeals process and was not made aware of it. I am a bit confused in that regard. The Minister of State also stated that it is not a reopening, but many people did not know about first scheme and did not apply for it as a result. Obviously, they were then not entitled to apply for the second one or did not meet the criteria.”
“It is very important that we try to give these people assurances that they will get paid as soon as possible. That is why I am raising this issue. I believe the Minister of State took a question on the payment on 1 May and stated it was to be brought in very shortly afterwards. I ask the Minister of State to make things clear this morning, because so many people are under financial pressure and do not know what is happening. Many people are under financial pressure that they are not used to or never been under before because of the cost of everything, including materials and supplies, and Brexit is not helping. I ask the Minister of State to provide certainty and to tell me what is happening.”
“The ICOB grant was introduced in March 2024 and people could apply until 29 May. Allegedly, businesses were to receive a once-off grant payment as a contribution towards the rising costs they faced, including the rising costs of rates. Around that time, perhaps during the previous year, Tailte Éireann revalued and reclassified people's properties and significantly increased the rates. In some cases, they were increased by two or three times the amount the business used to pay. While the Government did great work by introducing this business payment as a once-off payment, we are worried about how people will contend with the rates bills they will receive. Those that did not qualify for the ICOB grant did not qualify for the power up grant the following October. As I said to the Minister of State, some businesses were misclassified.”
“I am glad to get the opportunity to discuss with the Minister of State the promised appeals process for business grants where businesses were misclassified, including the power up grant. When will this appeals process begin? In the past few days, we have been in contact with our local authority and it has not been informed of any appeals process or it is not sure if it will happen. In addition to those who qualify - retail, hospitality and beauty businesses - other businesses believed they were wrongly excluded from the increased cost of business, ICOB, and power up grants. Garages, body shops and plant hire and repair companies, all if which paid rates, felt they were not included or they did not know about it. That is the other thing. Other businesses in the first category were not aware of the scheme. Can they be considered?”
“I fear no provision has been made for that. Reduce the tax and incentivise people to let their vacant houses out. That is necessary to tackle the problem of those empty houses. A vacant house provides no tax for the Government. We should take less tax in respect of such houses and do the same around the country for the other landlords. People would be far more interested in letting out their houses as a result.”
“We have been hard hit by the urban regeneration pressure clause that deprives many young fellows who are four or five miles outside the town. They cannot get permission to build their own houses. Killarney has been in a pressure zone for more than seven years. Houses there are terribly scarce and terribly expensive. I do not see how what is proposed is going to help the housing sector. We must build more houses. We need to give local authorities more autonomy to build more houses. Long ago, when people were homeless, a county council would bring in demountable homes. That facility is no longer there. If you had a site, you could get a place in a couple of days. Another thing which has to be remembered is that the figures are going up, but we are housing more immigrants and housing more than our own.”
“I am glad to get the opportunity to talk about housing again. This is a crisis. Everyone recognises that it is a crisis. I am not one bit happy that landlords or homeowners are being blamed for what is happening in the rental sector. Every side seems to be pointing at people who own houses and are trying to rent them out. I point out that I do have no house only my own. There are many vacant houses. I have asked the Government before to halve the tax or do something with it, such as 50% tax for someone who gets €1,000 in rent for a house. So many houses are idle, and there is no incentive to rent them out. Then people are afraid that they will not get their houses back. In regard to planning permission for those who wish to build their own houses, people in County Kerry have been left behind on this.”
“It is way safer, and there is more room than there is on the carriageway. Things like that are happening and are causing problems for many people.”
“It costs way more to put in heat pumps and do all the work relating to them rather than to just do the necessary things to ensure people are comfortable and that their houses are painted and can be lived in. Doing this extreme revamping of heat systems was the Green Party's idea. However, that party is no longer in power. I am asking the Government to take over and ensure that money is not wasted in this regard. Money is being wasted in Fossa in terms of work to narrow the road there. On the N72, starting out on the Ring of Kerry from Killorglin, two vehicles now cannot meet. The footpath and the cycleway are wider than the road. Work is ongoing there. When you are held up there; you would often look and size it up. You could drive down the inside of the road up on the footpath and on the cycleway with any kind of car or vehicle.”
“I spoke to a lady in another village who was upset because the council told her that it is going to revamp her house and that a similar system is going to be installed. She explained that all she wants is her little fire, which is very cosy and gives her satisfaction when she puts it down and keeps it going all night. All she wants is to be left the fire. This is a waste of funds when we could be turning houses around much quicker. Some people just want homes. They do not want to be roasted inside them. While there may be more heat out of a heat pump, the electricity bill might be more across the year because the electricity has to be left on longer. We are wasting money in certain instances that we could better spend elsewhere. A house in Marian Terrace in Killarney was vacant for five years.”
“Many are poor and struggling to put food on the table. It gives them a lot of trouble, and I feel for those people. There should be some way of assessing people’s ability to pay this tax. More often than not, the people I refer to live in local authority houses. Although the councils are the landlords in this situation, if these people request little repairs to their houses, the councils do not seem to have the money to do many of them at all. We see money being wasted. In Kilgarvan, which is the village I left today at 6 a.m., there are two council houses that are voids. They were lived in until November last. The roofs and chimneys have been taken off them and air-to-water heat systems are being installed. That is a waste of money when these houses had open fires.”
“We used to have a facility in Kerry County Council where two roads could be nominated for repair if they were in a bad state. A total of six councillors were in that area at the time. This used to happen in July. Roads which are not on the three-year roads programme fall into disrepair. It happens due to the impact of lorries, bad weather, frost and even heat, which can lift the tar and leave roads in a desperate state. That scheme was abolished in 2012 because the country was in a desperate state financially. It has not been restored since. The scheme gave the councils a bit of power and made them feel wanted and needed. Councils felt they could respond to the requests of the people. That is sadly missing, and I am asking that it be brought back. As already stated, many people are living in poverty.”
“It gives some local authority members a lot of anguish. I see that chief executive officers of the local authorities will be given the facility to increase it by 25%. I do not see any facility to bring it down if there were a need to do so. There are certain things that arise in this regard. Many people do not get much for the property tax. We had incidents in Kerry this spring where the streetlights were not working in many towns and villages such as Kilgarvan, Castleisland and Scartaglin. There was so much trouble. It took months to get them repaired. I do not know what was wrong, but people were continuously giving it to us in the neck that they did not even have the streetlights any more for safety when it came to walking to the shops and so forth.”
“I am glad to get the opportunity to talk about this Bill. It relates to an important topic. People talk a good deal about local property tax, especially those who can ill-afford to pay it and who are often in trouble. It gives those people who are living hand to mouth and who barely have enough to cover the cost of everything, from putting food on the table to keeping their heat or whatever going, great trouble. This measure will facilitate the crowd with the expensive houses worth more than €1 million. The value of houses has gone up everywhere. To buy a house is an impossibility with the costs and the rates that apply now. This is a tax on the family home. While we get services out of it, I often wonder whether the money is divided out fairly and whether there is real accountability for it within the local authorities.”
“The Government should incentivise them to build smaller houses by giving them another grant in addition to the first-time buyers grant. I ask the Government to consider doing so.”
“The cost of building a new house is somewhere around €400,000 for a young couple or whomever. One third of the actual building cost comprises VAT, other taxes and levies. Will the Government consider doing anything about that? Would it be possible to increase the first-time buyers grant if people were incentivised to build smaller houses, like we used to do in the 1970s and 1980s. I refer to any house under 1,350 sq. ft in area built at that time. I am not saying that we should base the bar around there, but maybe somewhere in between. People are building houses that range from 2,500 sq. ft. up to 3,000 sq. ft. Every square foot costs somewhere between €250 and €300. This is increasing the cost of houses. People are burying themselves in debt.”
“Under my own nose in Kilgarvan village, that is what is going on. It is wasting money. I believe the two houses will cost more than €100,000 each to turn around. They are gone over now to another village in east Kerry and they went around to 18 houses to tell them they are fitting heat pumps. This is a waste of money when there are other houses to be turned around. It is wasting good money. One poor woman rang me and said "Danny, they're talking of taking out my little fireplace and taking down the chimney. That's all I have after all my years and I want my little fire." I have been on to Kerry County Council. This is wasting money, while other houses around the parish and around different parishes in Kerry are having no work done to them. That is ridiculous.”