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 5 of 15.
“The most important thing there is that if the landlord wants the house back, in that instance, they can get it within four weeks, not months and years as happens in many other cases. That has turned many landlords off because they cannot get their houses back when they want them. I will give an example. A man bought a house in Killarney but could not come back from Australia for 12 months. Someone begged him to rent it to them and he did so but when he came back from Australia after the 12 months, he could not get into his house for three years. Those are the blockages that need to be removed to ensure people rent out these vacant houses. There are many of them around the country. I ask the Government to deal with that.”
“Will the Minister look at this scheme and sort it out, especially in Kerry? I do not know whether it is happening in other places. There are many vacant houses in our county. I gave the example previously of there being 54 between Kenmare and Kilgarvan, and within six or seven miles of Killarney town. People could step onto the TFI bus between Kenmare and Killarney, which passes every hour. It is a crying shame that so many of these are vacant when people are looking for houses. Will the Government dedicate a team to go around to see what would help people or incentivise them to rent the houses? The biggest problem is the fear people have that they will not be able to get the house back if they rent it out. There is a scheme for Ukrainians where €600 is paid by the State to the landlord tax free.”
“I have dealt with a lady with two young children – in fact, I have dealt with several such cases - bawling crying every Saturday in Killarney. A number of them are in to me constantly. The tenant in situ scheme would be a great scheme if it was working properly, but Kerry County Council says it cannot buy houses with the tenants in them because it is not being funded by the Department for any repairs or works that would be needed for it to buy the house. This is wrong as Kerry County Council could rent it back to the tenants at local authority rent prices and perhaps later sell it to the tenants when they get on their feet. All of us elected to this Chamber support the tenant in situ scheme to allow families to continue renting. As I said, if the tenants get on their feet, they could end up buying out the council.”
“I am glad to get the opportunity to raise this problem at the Topical Issue forum today. I hope the Minister will take it seriously. I do not want to be laughed at like I was last week when I asked a question here. This is serious business for anyone who does not have a home and is trying to find a property to rent. In many instances, they can be hit with a traumatic event that they were never ready for. Since the Residential Tenancies Bill was mooted last year along with the idea that people would have to rent out houses for six years, many people have decided to get out. Hundreds of people have been to my office after getting a notice to quit and finding themselves with nowhere to go. One fellow came to me out of the back of a transit van, which is where he is staying.”
“The Department of housing should step in if a young couple are in trouble and cannot hold onto the house. I am over time.”
“We will have to do something constructive in this regard. I did not agree with the Bill last week to make people rent out their houses for six years. For those people who own, buy or are trying to pay back a house, it is their constitutional and democratic right to do whatever they like with it. That is how I feel about it and nothing will ever move me from that viewpoint. I have always felt that no one has a right to go through someone’s place, be it a farm or whatever, without their say-so. The same applies to a second home or whatever it is that people are renting out. They should not be forced. There are other ways. We have so many vacant houses. Surely we could entice those houseowners to rent them in some way or other. We must also ensure that we do not lose any more of our people.”
“I cannot understand why we cannot either reduce VAT or get rid of it altogether to make building materials affordable. In Kerry, it would mean an awful lot to people if they could get planning permission. We are doing very good with social housing but people who want to build a house are coming up against all of that. They cannot get planning permission or afford a house, despite having good jobs. For example, a couple, one a garda and the other a teacher, cannot afford the houses. I can understand how they run into trouble. It would hurt me very much as well if I thought some of these foreign investors were buying up those types of homes. We must do our level best to ensure that does not happen. We are here invariably every night and day talking about housing. The time for talking has to stop.”
“On one of the nights before Christmas, a gang of youngsters came in. Although I call them “youngsters”, they ranged in ages between 28 and 33. There were 17 of them. While they all had good, professional jobs, they felt they could not afford to purchase or build a house in Ireland. They were all leaving their jobs behind to go to Australia. All of them, alongside their boyfriends and girlfriends, were leaving after Christmas to different parts of Australia. The group totalled 17. It is terrible. We are losing very bright, energetic people. It galls me when I hear so much talk about affordable homes. No homes will be affordable until we do something about VAT and the cost of them. We need to do something like that. In England, there is no VAT on building materials.”
“It is very sad. For the past ten years or more, I have been very angry and upset about banks transferring loans to vulture funds. Whether it is a farm or a house, the receivers come and do their best. In many cases, they have succeeded in selling homes and property whose rightful owners ran into a bit of bother. If a couple got into trouble, I always thought it would be a great idea if the Department of housing or whoever could pay off their mortgage, or whatever it is, and let the young couple or people in trouble rent back the house for a while until they got on their feet again. That is not happening, however. The receivers just do not mind. In many cases, they did not even get court orders to allow them to sell the places. They just went on and sold them. That happened and it was never right.”
“I am glad to get the opportunity to speak. I did not think my slot was coming up so soon. It is very tough for young couples now who are trying to purchase, build or hold onto a home. When it comes to building homes in Kerry, there are a lot of people who would build their home if they could get planning permission, but they cannot because of the strict rules with urban-generated pressure. Locals are being denied planning permission without ever coming out of a town. The urban-generated pressure rule was brought in to stop people coming out from urban areas to rural areas, but it is not only doing that; it is stopping locals from getting planning permission on a site they might get from their father, mother or neighbour, which would allow them to be close to home. If they are not the son or daughter of a farmer, they will not be allowed.”
“We need to know what is involved and what is being done. Does the Minister have an answer as to why the disease is spreading from the North of Ireland to Wexford? We would like to hear that. Education is paramount to stopping the spread of the disease. We were glad in the early 2000s when we stopped foot and mouth and kept it out of our country. That was vital. I ask the Minister and his officials to ensure they do their best to curtail the disease with all of the expertise they have available to them and ensure the disease does not become rampant in our country and in farms. As I have said many times, our farming community is vital for rural and urban Ireland because we depend on the sector for the food we eat every day.”
“We need straw for bedding calves, feeding cattle and mixing into diet feeders to help cattle improve and grow efficiently. This could not be more serious. Given the trouble the Taoiseach and his officials went to in order to secure the Chinese market, it would be a shame to lose it. If other countries stopped us exporting or refused to take our exports, we would be in trouble. The price of cattle would come down despite what people have done over the winter. There are other questions. When cattle are housed, are they safe? I do not see midges in housed cattle. We had midges at times, such as in the bog and other such places, so we do not want them. Can humans or birds spread bluetongue? Birds travel long distances. We need to be educated on how the disease spreads. What are we doing in Wexford to curtail and stop the disease?”
“We are glad to have this debate because it is vital. Many Irish farmers do not really understand the implications of this or how it spreads. We have been told it is caused by midges but I do not think any midges would survive coming from the North to Wexford. How did that happen? Simple questions like that need to be explained. If there is evidence of how it happened or may have spread, the Minister could provide a link to the country because we would like to know that. Farmers around me have asked me questions. Are we importing straw? Can midges or insects be alive in straw and land here that way? If something like that is happening, we need to stop importing straw. We would have enough straw here if it was not being ploughed into the ground.”
“There are other ideas in other towns and places about holding back the water and creating flood plains. The Minister of State must get himself stuck into them and tell them that the easy way of sorting it out is to clear the rivers. There are no two ways about it.”
“That is why the thing is getting worse and worse. Many of our rivers are still in desperate need of being cleaned. Like Deputy McGrath says, everything comes down from the hills - silt, sand, gravel and every other kind of muck - and lands in the river. If the river is not cleaned out, where is it going to go only spill out over the banks onto roads and into houses? That is the trouble we are having. The Minister of State saw the courthouse bridge and the pipe that was crossing the eye of the bridge. That is what has been flooding the town of Kenmare for many years. I am appealing to the Minister of State to see again if there is any quick way of removing that. Whatever other work needs to be done can wait. Removing that would alleviate the serious problem in Kenmare at the present time.”
“I thank the Minister of State for being very hands-on and for coming to Kerry again recently. Back in 2018, he gave us funding to clear the Flesk river. For ten years before that, we were constantly being told that it would make no difference to clear the river, that it would only make 10 mm of a difference. The highest flood that has been there in the last eight years did not come within 8 ft of the road level and it used to be 3 ft on top of the road before that. They wanted to raise the road and do everything else but the fact is, as Deputy McGrath said, we need to clean the river. That was what always happened until 2002, until some genius decided that farmers could not touch the river any more, clean it out or do what they had been doing for centuries. If they did, they would lose their farm payments.”
“I am glad there are rumours that the Government is going to dilute the short-term letting in the Bill and to increase the population of towns so that it will apply to towns with populations of over 20,000. However, I believe anybody who has been doing Airbnb for more than seven years is entitled to planning permission because they already have it. There are people who have been doing this for 20 years and more. Whatever the Government is bringing forward should allow the people who have been doing Airbnb to continue doing it as they were. If the Government wants to bring in laws for new people going into Airbnb such that they have to go for planning permission, that is all right but the people that have been at it for years, especially for over seven years, should not have to go for planning permission. They have it by default.”
“I, like all the other Members, am very concerned about it. There is a big onus on our shoulders tomorrow to listen and to account for everything that is said and goes on in there. I would not be anywhere else in the world and will ensure that whatever role I play will be on behalf of the farmers up in the Gallery, the farmers around the country and especially the farmers from Kerry, from Slea Head all the way over to the Cork county bounds. I will do that tomorrow.”
“I want to be able to do that and to face the farmers head-on anytime because I came up here to do my best for them, as I do for all the other sectors of people I am proud to represent from the county of Kerry. I will make up my mind finally tomorrow but, like I said, this is a very worrying thing. The good word we have had about our produce and Bord Bia monitoring is all being jeopardised by this episode. From what investigations I have done and carried out, it has been made known to me that this particular individual was at this over 20 years ago, taking beef from Naas down to Midleton to put it into cold storage, the same beef we are talking about, Brazilian beef. I am seriously concerned to know, first of all, that he was appointed to such an important position as he is fulfilling at the minute.”
“I will wait until tomorrow to finally decide but I am fairly sure that all the people I have talked to, like many of the people up in the Gallery, are saying that this man will have to go. I will decide finally tomorrow. I am a member of the agriculture committee. I am proud to be a member of it because it does great work. We believe we are doing a great job and we want to continue doing that. We have very important positions to take and decisions to make tomorrow and we will finally make those. I am very hurt at what has happened for the people I represent. I love going into their yards to talk about inspections and all the different things in farming, whether it is the weather, the price of animals or whatever it is.”
“Is our Irish beef contaminated by that 1% that went through no inspection and landed here into the food chain? I know that all the farmers in the Gallery, like me, go to funerals evening after evening. Many people die of old age and many people die from accidents. They die from different things, but cancer is the predominant thing people are dying from. We do not know what causes it but we have our part to play in this country to ensure we have good food and the highest standard possible. I am afraid we are losing that traceability and that expertise we had. We always heard that one bad apple will ruin the pack. It looks to me like we had and still have the fox minding the chickens. When people go to court, we always hear that the judge and the jury have their minds 50% or 60% made up as to whether or not the lad will be convicted.”
“All the farmers from around the country are very welcome here tonight. I know they have all been very anxious and upset for the past number of weeks. What has happened is not fair. We know that the same standards do not apply in Brazil as apply here. I myself and my young fellas are farmers and we know what inspections are like. We worry about the TB test and the Bord Bia inspections, and then you can have an inspection out of the blue. We know what it means to be on the right side and to have everything in the right place. If you have a tag missing or if you have a drive off a tractor or it is only half on or whatever, you will not get your approval. It seems very wrong to me that produce can be put into a restaurant, or whatever it was, and it is stated that it is 99% Irish beef and 1% Brazilian beef. The first question arises there.”
“Saecula saeculorum - it will not happen. They have been with Airbnb for 20, 22 and 23 years, and they can prove they have been with it for more than seven years. Again, it is wrong to tell these people, or have housing departments in different places tell them, that they have to get planning permission or retention. That is not the truth. They can get registered, and they should be allowed to get registered, without doing this. This is the crucial point. If they go for planning and they are denied, they do not have the benefit of the 21 or 22 years they have been with Airbnb after that point. They have lost it because they went for planning. If they had planning, they would not have gone for it at that stage. They have to be very careful about that. I am against these things and against this Bill as it is constituted.”
“In fairness to Leo Varadkar, when he was Taoiseach, he said a blanket ban could not be right, even though he signed the document that means people are being stopped from coming out on national primary or national secondary roads. In 2012, it was he who signed it into law. However, he said afterwards, when he became Taoiseach, that a blanket ban was wrong. Many of those people are trying to get onto those types of roads, but they are not allowed. These are only small things. They could and should be sorted out between the Minister for housing, the planning regulator and the Taoiseach, if necessary, and all the other Ministers. They are simple things that could be sorted out. I am worried that this will not work. Trying to stop short-term letting is not fair and will not work. Those people will not go into long-term letting.”
“It is like the planning regulator can do what he likes, and he does not listen to the elected members of Kerry County Council. That is what has happened in Kerry. He insisted on extinguishing this area, way out from Killorglin, from Killarney, from Kenmare and from Dingle, so people could not get permission out in the countryside. That is what is happening. Those people would not be looking to build a house. They have their own houses built long ago. They were just asking for planning permission on equal terms so their septic tanks would be right, or they would have access to the national road or whatever road they are coming out onto - the local road - so they would not cause accidents. They are not looking for anything exceptional. Even where there is an existing entrance, they are disallowed. Imagine that.”
“We have this urban generated pressure clause in our planning system in Kerry that rules against people. It was supposed to prevent people from coming out the country from an urban setting but three, four or seven miles out, the people from that area cannot get permission on that. Surely to God, we should be trying to do something for people who are asking for nothing but planning permission. They will borrow the money. If they have the money, they will build the house because they want to stay near their people, and be near them at the end of their days. We are being blocked from that; it is still a blockage. I have been asking for this to be sorted out for three or four years. I asked the new Taoiseach and the new Ministers, but still, here we are, with nothing done about it.”
“I have a number of times taken out officials from Kerry County Council to look at a house where the tenant has been asked to leave and their time is up. Invariably, they have told me that there is something wrong with the house and at the end of it, after a number of times doing this, they tell me they will buy no second-hand house, only a new house. It is not fair to be telling people that there is a tenant in situ scheme when it is not working in Kerry. Maybe it is working somewhere else. It is good to see three Ministers listening to us because we only have a few minutes when we come in here. This six-year rule will not work. The Department will lose more houses than it will gain. I asked the Minister and the Ministers of State about doing something for people who want to build their own house.”
“I will say to the Minister and Ministers of State that this is another wrong direction before they go any farther with it. People have been at this for 20 years and they will not rent their houses long term for all the different reasons. The Government has not been clear or been honest with these people. They are telling them to go for planning permission, that they will get planning permission and to register with Bord Fáilte, and I say to the Minister and the Ministers of State that is false. They do not need to go for planning permission when they are more than seven years at it. They have planning acquired by being in the game for seven years. I ask the Minister of State to take stock of that. I want him to know also what is happening about the tenant in situ scheme in Kerry.”
“There are 54 houses from the top of Kenmare town, when you go out a small bit, all the way out to Kilgarvan, through Kilgarvan village, down Glenflesk until you finish up at the Kerry Way. On the side of the road, 54 houses are vacant and no one in them. They are grand houses. People need only step onto the road where the 270 bus is passing from Killarney to Kenmare, through Kilgarvan and through Glenflesk and they could go where they like on the rural transport. The Government's plan to lock people who are renting houses into six-year tenancies is not going to work in Kerry. I say that because people are getting on to me every day. Trying to force people into six-year tenancies is not going to work. The Government also has short-term lettings in its sight.”
“We should be doing something with them. It is unbelievable to see young girls coming in to my clinic who are after getting notice to quit and it is all because of this six-year rule. I saw a girl, while I was dealing with the few that were before her last week. I looked down the hall and she was absolutely shaking - every bit of her like an ivy leaf. I am hurt by that. We could be doing better some other way. The Minister and Minister of State may have a lot of work put into this but I would like to see them doing something about equalising the story of Irish people with the Ukrainians and I would like to see them doing a lot more about the vacant houses that are all around us.”
“What is happening there is that the Ukrainians will get the house before the Irish person because there is €600 tax free being put upfront by the State for them and we are not offering that - I asked the Government to do that - for Irish people. They are our own and they are in trouble. The Government could do that. That would tempt a lot of people not to leave their houses vacant. There are so many of them there. The other problem that I have stated is the landlords are paying 50% tax, which is not fair. Other countries only allow for 30% tax, or maybe 27% or 28% tax. Regardless of what their income is or what other income they have besides the houses, that is what they would pay in income tax against whatever rent they are getting. We should be doing something like that. We have too many vacant houses around the country.”
“I worry for people who meet clients like those after six years trying to get someone like that out of their houses. There were several other things that we could do. Instead, we should be dealing with the vacant houses. They are all around us. We see them every day. I have asked the Government several times to do something like it is doing for the Ukrainians, that is, pay €600 tax free to the landlords that are renting those houses to them. They are getting them and our Irish people are not getting them in Kerry. That is what I am talking about - not up the country, around the country or elsewhere. I am talking about Killarney, Tralee, Dingle, Kenmare and all those places.”
“Even though he made it clear at the outset, he did not get his house back for another year and a half. There was another person who rented out his house and found that he could not pay the bank for the house so he entered into a transaction. He sold his house. He had notice given to the tenant, who, by the way, was a consultant earning good money. The young fella needed to get his house back to pay the bank and to get out, but it took him three years to get that consultant out. He even went to the bother of locating another house for the consultant and the consultant came back and told him that his wife did not like that house so the poor fella who had his house sold was still paying the bank loan because he could not get the money from the fella that bought it since he could not give him vacant possession. That is what happened.”
“It is mostly one or two around Kerry. Since this story was being mooted in the second half of last year, an amount of people have come into my clinics or are on the phone day after day shivering. They are all get notices now because these landlords - I do not like calling them landlords but that is what they are talked about as - or house owners are getting out. That is a fact. In a way, I do not blame them because they are being forced into this where they will have to rent their houses for six full years. No one knows what way the situation will change. Six years is a very long time. I will give the Minister of State two examples. There was a young fella who came home from Australia and he bought a house. He was going back to Australia and he made it clear he would be back home in Ireland in 12 months.”
“First, I want to make it crystal clear that I myself only own one house and I am not in the rental business or never have been. I want to make that absolutely clear. I only own one house. I am very concerned about the six-year rule. I believe we are attempting to interfere with people's constitutional and democratic rights. People work very hard, early in the morning and late at night, to build or buy these homes and they have a constitutional right to determine how long they want to rent their house out for to tenants. Tenants and landlords need each other - one as much as the other. For the most part, 70% or 80% of landlords and tenants are getting on damn fine without any interference from us and that is a fact. It is wrong to be forcing out honest good people with maybe one house, two houses or, at the very most, three houses.”
“If the Minister, I or anyone else inside in this Chamber is going for the job, we have to be vetted and vetted several times. The same thing has to apply to people coming in here. They have to be vetted. It is the most important thing. We have to understand and be sure where they come from. I urge the Minister to continue in his work because he is a massive improvement on what we had under the previous Government. We look forward to supporting him.”
“At the same time, those people who come here without any identification, have no vetting and are not prepared to say where they came from or how they came to be here, must be sent back by return plane to wherever they came from last - whatever airport they got on. I will be supporting this. It looks like we will have some plan or some form of order to follow now because we did not over the past number of years. Many people were hurt in rural communities when they saw people landing there and they were not sure where they were from. They did not have any vetting and they were worried about them, especially women who were walking the walks they used always walk in the evenings but had to stop. That is not right. This is our country and our women, men and children must be protected from whoever new is coming in.”
“The rule for people granted international protection is different in that they only need to be here for three years. The Minister is proposing to update that so that they will have to be resident here for five years before they can apply to be citizens here. It would be very important to see if there is any way that we can fast-track the pathway for people who are working to stay here. As I said, many employers and having difficulty in sourcing staff. They may have them on a time limit or whatever it is and when that time is up, they are ordered to go back and they are not able to get an extension. I ask the Minister to review that and ensure that people who want to work and are working here are facilitated in their quest to remain here.”
“The scheme will be implemented over a planned 12-month period, allowing for the development of systems and resources to assess eligibility, share data securely, and collect and process payments. While not all international protection applicants are working, many are. It makes sense and it is only right for these people who are earning an income and paying tax to also make a contribution to the State for their accommodation costs. Other member states operate those systems already. There are two rules for applying for citizenship. The Minister is proposing to update the rules around how people qualify for citizenship. At present someone wanting to apply for citizenship by naturalisation must have been resident here for five years.”
“The changes to the international protection system will ensure that anyone who has been granted asylum in Ireland is only permitted to avail of family reunification when they are financially self-sufficient and can provide for those they wish to bring here. The Minister is also proposing to introduce power to revoke or refuse a residence permit for refugee in circumstances where they are found to be a danger to the security of the State or have been convicted of involvement in serious crime. While these situations may be rate, there are a lot of them at times. It is important that these powers are provided for in law and that these people are sent back to their country of origin.”
“They may have men they have trained in and people who have very skills in the areas where they are working. We appreciate those people and we need them. We need the system to help them to progress and to stay here when they are working like this and they are needed. The other ones we can do without are the people who come here with no passport, and seem to arrive here and demand everything. We know what it was like for the people on the Muckross Road in Killarney when 70 or 80 asylum seekers were put into a house alongside elderly women on that road. They were not vetted and nobody knew where they were from or why they were there. That is very wrong because vetting is seriously important and if they have no passports or identification, they cannot be vetted and they should be sent back exactly to where they came from in the first place.”
“I am glad to talk on this very important Bill this evening. I thank the Minister, Deputy Jim O’Callaghan, for taking this issue by the scruff of the neck because, since he came into office and took over this role, he has already put people on the plane back to the countries that they came from if they were not entitled to be here. That has not been done in the last number of years with previous Ministers, and I am grateful to him for doing that. We have to differentiate between the people who are coming here. There are people who are coming here with work visas and they are very welcome to work here. Many of them are badly needed and they have trouble in getting permanent visas or getting their family, wives and children brought over here. Reputable employers are raising concerns about that.”
“I am asking the Government once again to deal with this because if the 170 houses are not built and water is the cause, I will clear the whole lot of you out of it myself. This has been going on for long enough.”
“Scartaglin, Corra and Beaufort do not have treatment plants. In Moyvane you cannot build another house. I could go on and on. When Kerry County Council was operating the sewage treatment services it had a list and there was a priority list. I do not know what the Minister of State is reading now but I am asking him to find that priority list and go back through it. These people were promised, almost 20 years ago, that their treatment plant was to be brought forward. There are 170 houses waiting to start in Kenmare, where we have not had a private estate built in 20 years. What we are waiting for now is water. Like I said in the House the other day, we have water coming down out of the sky every day and we are surrounded by lakes up on the hill but there is no water going into the pipe.”
“I am asking the Government to look at that once again. I have raised it every year since I came up here. I am asking for separate funding for bridges. Whether it is on local, regional or secondary and national primary roads, we have to wait far too long, sometimes two or three years, for these bridges to be repaired. These are bridges built in the 1880s. I am asking for real funding for the local improvement schemes in Kerry this year because there are still over 600 on the list that have not been attended to. All over Kerry we have settlements that either have no sewage treatment plant or are looking for extensions. Castleisland has been looking for an extension for the sewerage scheme there since 1986. Imagine that. I found it above in my father's shed a number of years ago. He was at it at that time.”
“I am glad to have an opportunity to ask the Minister of State to prioritise a number of projects in Kerry. The N72 leaves Killarney, going from Ballydowny to the Golden Nugget, and then goes around the Ring of Kerry from the Gap across to Grenagh. It is otherwise known as the Killalee project. These two sections of road are in a desperate state. The road from the Golden Nugget to the Gap Cross has been completed and a fortune has been spent but we are in a worse scenario now because the road has been narrowed and it is not safe for two vehicles of any kind to pass each other. The road from Blackwater Bridge to Tahilla and from Parknasilla to Sneem, also on the eastern side of the Ring of Kerry, is in a desperate state and it is not safe for rigid lorries, articulated lorries and buses to pass each other.”
“People in social homes that been revamped and fitted with heat pumps are getting savage bills. The Minister must go after the regulator and give people confidence. They do not have confidence in what the regulator has been doing. We need to bring down the cost of the electricity. I do not believe it is fair that it has risen day by day with no checks on how it is going to be managed or curtailed. The regulator is simply not doing his job. I appeal to the Minister to do something for people with disabilities, especially those living on their own who are finding it difficult to survive. The word is that Exchequer funding and taxes are up, so I am appealing to the Minister to do something for these people who genuinely need a bit of help and are waiting for it. They are depending us to ensure that they get something.”
“We saw yesterday evening that Ireland is contributing to a €90 billion loan to Ukraine to help it with its energy. We must look after our own people at home first and foremost. People in Ireland are our priority. The cost of living is going up every day in one way or another. People living on their own are really struggling and they have to get different payments to try to help them along and help from organisations like the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. But for these organisations, some of these people would not manage at all. We need to do more for our people with disabilities. Many of them are afraid to even light the fire because they are so frightened about this. They are upset with this worry about climate change. They feel guilty if they light the fire and many of them do not have the fire to light.”
“The regulator needs to be more prominent and active. I know what it means to have a disability as my grandfather spent 29 years in a wheelchair. I remember him, from when I was a young fellow, and how hard it was for him to manage at that time. I understand that it is harder for people with a disability to live compared to people who are mobile and do not have a disability. I often see how Kerry County Council revamps some of its social housing. It puts in heat pumps and then we see the exorbitant bills that people get for electricity. I do not know why this is happening. It is supposed to be cost-effective but it is a fact that people get exorbitant bills and get into serious trouble. People whose houses were redone late last year already have savage bills. I know that every one of us has different priorities.”
“I thank the Social Democrats for bringing forward this motion, which is very important. We all know that people with a disability have the greatest need to be looked after. I honestly believe that people with a disability who are living on their own should be looked after more than anyone else because they face all the costs of keeping the house and trying to keep themselves warm. We all know that since Bord na Móna closed down, the cost of electricity has gone up day by day. The regulator is not doing his job. Different energy companies are putting up electricity prices at different rates, and we cannot understand that. At one time, as the others were putting them up, one company actually put them down. I cannot understand what is going on there and I do not think the Government understands either.”