Ken O'Flynn
Cork North-Central · Independent Ireland · Ireland
“The Government has not addressed school uniform problems or the fact that most parents have to pay €300 for a PE kit. It has not addressed the problem that parents have to give this voluntary contribution, which is really not voluntary when schools are putting out news bulletins listing the names of families who have contributed and those…”
“Every one of us knows from our own constituencies that laptops, iPads and tablets are being used regularly by order of boards of management. I have to acknowledge the Government's good work and call it out, including the free books scheme and the school meals. However, the Government has made a hames of the school meals.”
“Like many of the stories the Minister of State has heard today in the House, it is not strange that we have constituents coming to us regularly saying the biggest fear they have is the postman's knock.”
“We should all be inside here hanging our heads in shame about how we are treating people. Just go outside the gate and the Minister of State will see Cara Darmody outside Leinster House again, highlighting a law that the Government has been breaking for over 20 years. What was the Taoiseach's answer to me yesterday?”
“I am sure the Taoiseach will join me in welcoming Christy Hussey and Conor Burke to the Public Gallery. Since this morning, a 15-year-old child has been sitting in protest outside the gates of Leinster House. Cara Darmody is highlighting the fact that the State breaking its own law.”
“It is reported that half of the women murdered in the Kingdom of Spain this year were killed by foreign nationals. Across the Continent, governments have opened their doors and lost control of their borders. When their own citizens stand up and take notice, these governments lecture them and call them far-right for calling them out.”
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Every one of 646 lines we hold for Ken O'Flynn, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 5 of 13.
“I thank the Member for bringing the Bill forward. I am conflicted about it. There is great sentiment to it and the heart is certainly in the right place. The Bill proposes amending the Act of 2023 to strengthen employee entitlements, limit refusal and objection grounds and delete section 20(2). I note, however, and these are just observations I have on the Bill, that it encourages and formalises a dispute culture in the workplace. I have concerns about that. I am concerned there would be a likelihood of an increase in complaints to the WRC and the Labour Court regarding same. I have heard Members in the House speak about employees, vilify employers and speak about them being billionaires on superyachts.”
“I heard Members in the House talk about a State construction company and how the State should take charge. I would not put this Government in charge of anything any more. We have seen what it has done with the bike shed outside the door and the children’s hospital. In fact, if we put the Government in charge of the dog’s home, I am pretty sure all the members of the Government would come home with fleas. That is how poor and bad this Government has been.”
“The Galway tent may have closed but the alignment that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have with developers and these types of people is still very evident by the continuous bills and tax exemptions it seems to give to these people. Huge apartment blocks can be seen in Cherrywood and people think they must be full, but a lot of them are empty. They are being rented out in stages – ten here and ten there – mainly to keep up the price of the rent, which is in excess of €2,000. The developer does not want to lose that €2,000-plus rent that he or she can command. We have a lot of empty apartment blocks around this city - I suspect it is similar around other cities – where the demand is falsified in order to ensure there is very tight and limited supply.”
“The people who depended on a second house, which they may have inherited, are getting out of the business because the Government put in the six years criterion without thinking of people going into homes who may need to sell the estate to finance that, and without thinking of people renting out their homes to students from UCC, UG or UCD for nine months. It is not thinking about that at all. It has created a monster. Everything the Government is doing is creating a monster. It is putting extra red tape around everything and destroying things. The Government seems to be working these days for the likes of Pepper Finance and these repossession companies that are using both the Commercial Court and the District Court as collection agencies, screwing people to the wall.”
“I thank the Sinn Féin Party for bringing this motion to the House. This is not about stopping funds but about building enough homes for Irish families to be able to afford to live in their own communities. It is well worth noting that. We know that 41% of people aged 18 to 34 are still living in their parents' box rooms. That is a fact. Since 2020, house prices are up by 40%. Rents increased by 84% from 2020 to 2022. Some places are recording increases of between 150% and 200% in rents. Last week the Government brought to the House what it thought was a great idea with the residential tenancies Bill. What it has achieved is moving out the small landlords.”
“The comments made by certain Ministers about flood plains have left a lot of questions unanswered. That needs to be addressed in the House today. Local authorities, builders and people building houses on flood plains need to get information and have a proper structure of what the Minister is actually saying about building on flood plains. We need a timeline.”
“I do not understand how it takes so long to get one thing done while people are suffering, lying awake at night wondering if they are going to be out of their home for another 12 months. That is what they are being put through. Part of this motion is very fitting. Cork City Council passed a motion unanimously last Monday night, tabled by Councillor Noel O'Flynn of Independent Ireland, asking for a system similar to the one in the Kingdom of Spain which provides a strong model, the ES-Alert system, to be put in place. I have witnessed the system myself. It is a fantastic model that works well, alerting people of the risk in their vicinity. It is very well managed and protects personal data as well. It is not a text alert but an entire system that alerts people by telephone. That needs to be done as well.”
“Imagine having the worry that either your house will go on fire, flood or something else will happen but you cannot get any insurance. That is the reality in my constituency in Cork and what people are going through day in, day out. There seems to be no let-up. We have all spoken about planning and the need to change it but what has the Government done? Government Deputies talk the talk and wring their hands. They say lessons must be learned, we need to move faster, build houses and do this, that and the other but the Government is not doing it. It is talking about it but there is no legislation coming through this House. We are here day in, day out, hearing all these marvellous things we should be doing but they are not being done. For God's sake, would the rest of you all wake up and do your bloody job.”
“The family, a son and his elderly mother, were just back in their property after a year, with the entire property done up and all restored, when the river burst its banks again due to heavy flooding. It was going to happen anyway and they are out of the house again for another two years. That is the reality people are living. People tell me that when it rains, they check their gardens and cannot sleep at night because they are worried about what is going to happen. That is just in Blackpool. For businesses in Blackpool, an empty unit cannot be rented out at the moment because it is not possible to get insurance. No insurance company will cover that. Ballyvolane is higher up the hill. It flooded in 2009 and people there still cannot get insurance on their homes because there is no flood defence system there 17 years on.”
“I thank Aontú for tabling this motion. It is well put together, well thought out and well planned. I have mentioned these issues in the House on a number of occasions and brought them up when I was a member of Cork City Council regularly. Speaking of Cork City Council, 2009, the Minister of State may recall, is when Cork nearly drowned after the rivers burst their banks, waters in the dam had to be released and there was absolute destruction in the city. That was 17 years ago. We still have not seen flood defences built in the city. In Midleton, as my colleague just said, there has been no planning application made and we know the town floods regularly. Blackpool is in my constituency. Last month, I stood in a house on the Commons Road in Blackpool, which has been flooded on three separate occasions.”
“Deputy O'Donoghue made a valid point about branding AI images. The other thing we have to address - penalising people is mentioned in the legislation and bringing them-----”
“They are now scanning the globe, generating these types of images and sharing them on various platforms on the dark web, on Telegram and on various other communication networks and they have become very sophisticated. The problem is that we are not able to catch up. For some reason, criminal activity and those who are generating money from this and those involved in gratification from looking at young children are far more sophisticated and are running rings around the Irish Government, European governments and the rest. I do not know whether this legislation will make much difference. I say that because we are dealing with people in Singapore, China and Taiwan and groups in Silicon Valley. How far does it span? The entire world has to be working on this. The entire networks have to be working on it.”
“I have never received an appointment or a possible opening for him to meet and talk to this family. This heartbroken mother still sees images of her child occasionally arrive on TikTok. She opens her phone, Facebook or whatever and sees images of Luke in his final moments of distress. No one is willing to talk about that. I have asked the Minister of State and the Minister to bring in a Luke's Law to address that situation. It ties in a lot with the things being discussed tonight, nudification and the atrocities that are happening in what is the digital wild west, without a doubt, to women and particularly to children. Paedophile rings have become incredibly sophisticated. That is the reality. They have embraced technology far more than most of us ever have.”
“I thank Sinn Féin for bringing this Bill to the House. It is an important, detailed and well put together Bill. The senior Minister referred quite heavily in his speech to Coco's Law. More than 12 months ago, I wrote to the Minister about expanding Coco's Law on behalf of a young gentleman who lost his life in the River Lee in Cork - he was 33 years old - Luke Hyde. I asked him to bring in an addition, known as Luke's Law. This young man drowned in the River Lee while hundreds of people videoed him in difficulty. They videoed the final moments of his life. On three occasions, I have written to the Minister of State's Department and to the senior Minister, requesting he meet the Hyde family. I have received an acknowledgement that my letter was received.”
“However, I cannot understand how someone can enter this country after flying from France or Britain because there were no direct flights from their own country without any passport or identification.”
“I previously mentioned in this House people who entered Dublin airport and when asked how they arrived in this country, which is one of the standard questions, replied: "I arrived by hot air balloon; how else do you think I got here?" That is not somebody who is interested in being a good citizen in this country. Anyone who refuses to co-operate should not be facilitated in this country. I refer to the number of people who are entering this country without a passport or any sort of identification. Thousands of those people have entered this country. When some is running and fleeing for their life and getting on a boat and arriving in Spain, Greece or Italy, which we see a lot of the time, I understand why they may not have passport on them.”
“There was also slow decision-making by this Administration and the previous Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Green Administration. Weak administration rewards incompetence and the lack of co-operation. The failure to enforce laws and return people undermines the rule of law. The measures in the Bill are serious measures. I accept that. They are the right measures to introduce but they do not go far enough. These are measures that should have been in place a long time ago. Mandatory screening is basic governance. Biometric identification is non-negotiable and non-co-operation with the State should never be an option.”
“I welcome the comments by Deputy Geoghegan about obligations to children. I am delighted to see that someone in Fine Gael is finally realising that we have obligations to children and, in particular the 6,000 homeless children in Ireland and that our obligation should be to them. Ireland's international protection system has been exploited for far too long. The problem has never been the compassion of the Irish people but the problem was the permissibility of the Irish State. The fact is we were too obliging and too quiet. We sat down, took what we were given and said nothing as if this was just the way it was and we could not do anything. There were extremely weak controls and by having weak controls, it led to abuse.”
“Then the Government had the audacity in the House last week to have the minister for silence, otherwise known as Pádraig O'Sullivan, give out to and admonished those on this side of the House, and tell them to shut up and stay quiet about the €1 billion that is needed for the north side of Cork. We should all stay quiet, and we should let people drink poisoned water, according to Deputy O'Sullivan. We heard the other gentleman from Carlow-Kilkenny just a moment ago. I swear to God but I thought I was listening to someone on this side of the House because he seems to forget that his own party is in power. That is absolutely ridiculous.”
“It does not even take into account the 2040 counterbalance plan. I represent the 42nd most congested city in the world - Cork. How many park-and-ride facilities has it got? It has one park-and-ride facility. The Government has not even put in a plan which connects the Cork Luas. By the way, there is not a shovel in the ground on that. It has not connected the Cork Luas all the way from the airport into the city. We have a situation where buses are coming into Cork city. People who are coming from Thurles, Tipperary and different areas who want to use Cork Airport cannot get a bus directly to Cork city. That is how bad BusConnects and the infrastructure development is there.”
“I read the Government's plan. I read all 140 pages, plus the 17 pages of the Minister, Deputy Chambers's speech in which he called it an accelerated infrastructure plan. I have to say that if that is accelerated, I truly would hate to see the Government in reverse because this is a backward plan. That plan does nothing and delivers nothing. The Government's 140-page document barely talks about Cork. It does not talk about the northern distributor road in Cork. It does not talk about the Mallow relief road in Cork. It does not talk about the Cork to Limerick motorway. It does not mention the northern ring road in Cork. It does not mention that the ESB supply that is needed for the 1,000-acre Industrial Development Authority, IDA, site in Cork to be upgraded to facilitate the southern region.”
“These sometimes cost €30, €40 or €50. Can we make allowances for those people who are on the medical card such that when there is a supply deficiency and a product is not available, the cost of substitute products will be under the medical card scheme?”
“All brands of salbutamol nebulisers currently covered under the medical card scheme are out of stock nationwide due to a manufacturing problem and issues with the supply chain. Therefore, pharmacists, through no fault of their own, have to come up with alternatives, namely the prescription of an unlicensed product that is not covered by the HSE and that is not reimbursable. That probably costs about €30. I am getting dozens of calls to my office about this. When I put it up on Facebook and asked people to make contact with me, hundreds of individuals made contact with our office about other products that are not available or about substitute products that are coming in. There are products that are not available that are covered under the medical card scheme. People have to use substitute products as a result and they have to pay for them.”
“The Minister of State has a Government report which tells us that the cost of living for people with disabilities is higher than average. They are obliged to meet additional costs of between €8,700 and €12,000. If we take into account index-linking, then it is probably €10,000 to €15,000, particularly in view of the costs people currently face. Deputy Collins is right that while once-off solutions are great - and it is great to get headlines - we have to start index-linking support for people with disabilities, both young and old, for the most vulnerable and for the forgotten people of this country, including the elderly and widows and widowers. This is not an elderly thing; it is about people who have either an invalidity or a disability.”
“We have all seen both the impact of the cost-of-living crisis and the increase in the cost of living. When we go to the fuel tank at home or the petrol pump or when we go to Dunnes or SuperValu, we are seeing it. It is doubly affecting those people who are the most forgotten and most vulnerable in our society, namely those with a disability or an invalidity. The people who are choosing between heating and eating have been described as being obliged to decide whether to pay their fuel bills. I had a carer on the phone to me the other day. She stated that she visits a gentleman and that he is wrapped up in six blankets and has one bar of the fire on because he is afraid to turn on his heating. He is afraid of the postman delivering the next bill that will come in from the ESB or Bord Gáis. This is how difficult it is for people.”
“We have USC charges that were brought in and we were told, "Oh yes, we are going to get rid of those in a couple of years" but we are still paying them. Food is up by 7.6% this year. The price of a litre of petrol is €1.70 and the price of diesel is €1.69. Rents are up 97% in Dublin. In parts of Blackpool in Cork, rents have risen by up to 210% in ten years. When is enough enough? We have given over half a billion euro to Ukraine. We have been very generous and decent, with €173 million in humanitarian aid and €200 million in legal aid, and we have spent €1.8 billion to €1.4 billion on accommodation.”
“Looking at this and how the Minister has explained it, it is slightly incorrect. It is not just a humanitarian support loan, which we have given generously to. This is a loan we are guaranteeing which we are somehow going to have to collect from Russia. Good luck with that and trying to collect something off the Russians if they lose. The reality here is there is no security. There is a huge problem when it comes to our neutrality. It brings us in the back door, without a shadow of a doubt, of supporting military aid into a country and this undermines our entire neutrality. I have to ask: when is enough enough? The cost of living in this country is absolutely crazy. We currently have 17,000 men, women and children on the streets of this country without houses.”
“We in Independent Ireland have brought this up in the House and we are doing so again. Everyone from every side of the House is saying the same thing: Irish Water is not fit for purpose. At least you had a city manager or a county manager to go to at one stage to talk about what was going on in water infrastructure and you got replies. Now you get an email address and are asked, "Can you provide me with your details?" and ten days later you might get a response.”
“The people of Mallow who are dealing every day with hard water and having to replace units, kettles, showers and everything else in their homes on a regular basis or having to spend €1,000 to €2,000 on water softeners have not forgotten it. The people with no infrastructure in Cork North-Central have not forgotten about it. We have been told straight out that we need a €1 billion investment on the north side of Cork. By God, if this were in the Taoiseach's area on the south side of Cork, the €1 billion would be found for it but it is not being found for Cork North-Central. That is an absolute disgrace, and the Minister of State sits there jerking his shoulders saying, "What can we do about it? Tough luck, lads. The buck does not stop with the Minister any more." I find it unbelievable that we are having this conversation day in, day out.”
“If any private chemical company in west Cork or Ringaskiddy or anywhere that direction were to carry out that type of work, there would be chief executives in the criminal courts. That is what would happen and that it is not happening. How people are not being held responsible in Irish Water for not telling the public about poisoned Irish water, poisoned drinking water, in our city is totally unacceptable. The Minister addressed the river basins. The Government is an absolute disgrace when it comes to the River Blackwater. It has found nobody responsible for the River Blackwater and the killing of 2,000 fish and it has let it go away and forgotten about it but the people of Mallow have not forgotten about it.”
“As every Deputy knows, if we put down a question in this House about Irish Water now, we will get a message back from the Ceann Comhairle's office telling us we are not entitled to an answer. Who, then, is responsible for Irish Water? Does the buck stop with the Minister or a State body? That is the first question that needs to be addressed in this House, and it needs to be sorted because somebody needs to take charge of Irish Water. I want to touch on the magnesium problem in Irish Water that the EPA and the WHO have highlighted. There is poisonous water, drinking water, in Cork city at the moment, with nobody being held accountable for it. The Minister is not investigating it and we are waiting for long-winded replies from the EPA. I have to be honest with the Minister of State.”
“We have to be cognisant of the fact that there are many people who start in a new job or new role or who come into this country and work who do not have a huge network of people around them. They also have a situation where they are learning on the job. It is a bit more difficult to send an email to somebody and ask them to explain how to do A, B, C and D rather than nudge the fellow at the next desk to ask how we really get over this problem. We have to be cognisant of that. I support the motion. It is a very well-intentioned motion, but it is not the be-all and end-all, and it is certainly not the answer to everything.”
“They physically could not work from home because there is no broadband available and certainly not at the bandwidth people would need to work from home. Foreign direct investment has resulted in 52,000 jobs in Cork. I heard a Member here talk about American companies in a very derogatory way. I am very thankful for that foreign direct investment in my constituency and 52,000 jobs in Cork. I am very thankful for that, and I do not think we should be nasty about foreign direct investment or nasty about companies when we do not really know what we are talking about when it comes to employment. Working from home benefits a lot of people, but it is a double-edged sword. I have seen people been isolated in their own homes as well. They have lost the connection with their workplace. We have to be cognisant of that.”
“The motion actually has tremendous merit, in fairness. There are ups and downs in the motion and some things about which I would be very sceptical or cautious. It gives the Government a get-out-of-jail card at times. I will talk about my own constituency. Where is the Cork Luas? It was announced three or four times. There is no shovel in the ground. Where is the northern ring road around Cork? Where is the northern distributor road? It is seven or eight years away. Where is the Mallow distributor road? Where is the orbital bus for Mallow that takes people from my estate to the other side of Mallow or from my estate in Ballyviniter up to the train station so people can genuinely commute? In parts of north Cork, west Cork and east Cork, we have no broadband connections. People could not work from home.”
“I would like the Government to reverse this decision, as Deputy Alan Kelly has said. There is no shame in changing your mind at the eleventh hour when the idea is right. Leave it go to Committee Stage and leave us add extras such as the head shops. If we legislate to protect our young people, we can stop this.”
“Why do we have to wait? For example, why did we have to wait for Ciaran Mullooly in Europe recently to head the charge on Mercosur? The Government stayed quiet. The Taoiseach was saying one thing in China and Fianna Fáil TDs were saying something else in the background. Here we are again, waiting for the almighty masters of Europe to tell us what to do. Why are we not taking charge of this ourselves? That is what we are meant to be doing. If we continue to respond by saying we have to wait for the European legislation to come in, this House is superfluous. There is no point in being in this House. There is no point in writing Irish legislation if we are going to be waiting for that. I have to say I am very disappointed. It seems to me that we are playing politics.”
“Now it is filling up a balloon and sniffing this laughing gas. It is a small way of getting into illegal highs, but what is next? Is it going to be marijuana in a year's time? Is it going to be cocaine? We all know this is readily available. We all know the types of characters that are supplying this. They are buying it from wholesalers or directly importing it on Amazon or from companies in China. They are buying large amounts of this, bringing it into the country and selling it directly, sometimes for three, four or ten times the price of what an ordinary bullet would actually cost. On the proposed legislation and how it has been put together, what the Government has said is very minute. The Government is saying it will wait for Europe. Why is Ireland not taking a lead on this? Why are we not the leading country on this?”
“Every Tidy Towns committee is saying the same thing. The other thing that has not been addressed in this House is that when nitrous oxide canisters are put into incinerators, they cause huge damage across the country. Nobody is mentioning that. This is a serious problem that has been noted in the Dublin incineration plans. It is causing litter problems and damage to incinerators. As we all know in this House, nitrous oxide is just one of the issues. We have head shops in Cork city, Limerick city, Galway city and Dublin city. These head shops are selling legal highs. The nitrous oxide and the other items sold in head shops, are, to my mind, the gateway drugs of today. Kids are starting off as young as 12, 13 or 14 and being introduced to this. Years ago we used to hear stories of sniffing bags of glue.”
“Something we are all united on - the voices around the House have been all united tonight - is that there is a serious problem with nitrous oxide. I am familiar with this product because I used it in my catering business and in my bar and restaurant business. I am familiar with the size of it. It amazes me now when I see these products coming online. I used to buy the silver bullets in packs of ten which cost about €14.95 to buy for a catering business. I used to buy it from Musgraves or MP O'Sullivans and I would use that. Those in the medical profession would use the very large canisters. There is no need for the super-sized canisters that we are now finding in football and GAA pitches, in housing estates and on the edge of the road. Whether we are in Cork, Dublin, Limerick, Waterford or Galway, we are finding them everywhere.”
“Like my other colleagues around the House and from the Government benches as well, I want to congratulate Deputy Ward on this Bill, which is well put together. I accept, as the Minister said, that a little bit of tweaking here and there and a little bit of change to X, Y and Z needs to be done. That could be achieved by leaving this Bill go forward to Committee Stage. I cannot help but think there is a bit of politics being played here tonight. As a previous speaker said, we are being berated here by a Government Minister who is telling us to come up with our own legislation and come up with a new plan. In fairness, we are putting new plans together all the time. We are putting forward new legislation. We are submitting ideas to the House. We are giving information to the House and providing credible opposition.”
“With the style and standard of the letter it sent out to everybody and what I have read through, and I have seen plenty of copies of them come through my office, I would seriously question the intention of the Revenue. The Bill is good. In fairness, there are an awful lot of standards in this Bill, which mean a lot of bureaucracy. There are HSE and ICT systems that cannot provide the virtual beds that we are being told about where people can convalesce at home and be monitored. That system is not in place. That system was meant to be there two years ago. There are regulations on the State that the Government will not be able to deliver in this Bill. While the intent might be great, but the Government will not be able to deliver it. It cannot bring down waiting list. How will it deliver this?”
“Deputy O'Donoghue also just spoke about the Revenue letters that went out to people and home carers. I am delighted that Revenue has written back to some of us as TDs over the past number of days and said it will not be pursuing people prior to 1 January. There is a lot more on people's plate when they are a carer for somebody when they are stressed out of their minds about how they get the dinner and cleaning done and a small bit of a break in the day to receive a letter like that from Revenue. I have yet to see a revenue commissioner in this country or any other country leave a bundle of cash behind them when they have to collect it. I would be seriously questioning the intent of Revenue after that.”
“We now have a situation in the Cork-Kerry region where we have 1,300 people on a waiting list. A total of 25% of the national waiting list is in the Cork-Kerry region waiting for home helps. That is an absolute disgrace. Nothing has been addressed about that. We are not addressing that in this Bill. We are not addressing it in this House. We are seeing the figures go up week after week and month after month but we are doing nothing about it. The one thing this Government is good at and has excelled at is waiting lists and statistics. That is what it is really good at. However, the waiting lists are not going down. They are only going up. That seems to be continuously the situation here. Deputy John McGuinness and I brought up an issue relating to the Revenue in this House last week.”
“I have read through the Bill entirely. When we look at the opening sections of this Bill, it is about people entering the home and the quality and standard of the type of person who comes in as a home carer. I find it amazing that we are now in 2026, and we are discussing that. This Bill should have been before this House 20 years. It is totally outdated. This Bill does not push for oversight. It risks more bureaucracy and costs for the people. I have been in the House for the entire debate. It has been mentioned that there are four- to five-month waiting lists to apply for carer's allowance. That is the average in this country at the moment. That is the average that TDs around this House are telling the Minister of State. I will be honest with him: I have seen it go up to six to seven months with people applying for carer's allowance.”
“In a lot of countries and a lot of places, and in certain counties and states in the United States in particular which have introduced their own state law, a property is taken from someone if it is not maintained. People are fined for not having a property up to a proper standard. Some places, and I do not overly agree with this, will tell people how to paint a property, what to paint it and what the painting scheme can be. I do not endorse this by any means but at least they are taking a proactive approach in their cities and towns. They are ensuring dereliction is not there, it is not a dumping ground, it is not a breeding ground for antisocial behaviour, and that there are no rodent infestations. If we were serious about having a war on dereliction I would be only too happy to join the Minister but come up with a plan.”
“The developer is looking for an extra floor. The developer needs to build an extra floor to make it profitable. Nobody from the local authority has picked up the phone and said there is something wrong and they are getting it wrong, and asked them to come in to have a preplanning meeting to see how to get it over the line. There is no incentive to get these people in. It does not matter a damn to the officials. This is the reality of it. I am speaking about local authority officials and not the Minister's officials. There is a situation here whereby we need to look at the entire process and say this has not worked. The State is more than 100 years old now and this has not worked. What we need to do is look at the standards and best practices throughout the world and throughout mainland Europe.”
“We need to be able to purchase it through CPO at much less than market value. They should be punished for it. It should be taken from them for a minuscule amount of money. This would teach them a lesson. I imagine we would see a lot of people putting up "for sale" signs very quickly on their derelict sites if they knew the value of the site was worth nothing all of a sudden because the Government or local authority would move in and say it is taking it from them, they are not doing anything with it, they are a menace to society, and they are causing serious problems to their neighbours. It is true. There is a house in Blackpool, and Deputy Gould would know it quite well also, which has gone in for planning permission 23 times and has been turned down. It has been a derelict site for the past 30 or 40 years.”
“The developer is actively pursuing it and is trying to do the right things to have property built and services put on the site. Surely there should be an exemption for this type of person. We are tinkering around with this. I do not want to be offensive to anyone because great credit is due to people who write Bills in the House, in particular those in the Opposition, but we are tinkering around with this. We know at this stage that the present rules and systems that are there for dereliction are not fit for purpose. The legislation the Minister is promising to bring in in 2027 or 2028 is not fit for purpose either. We need to have a system whereby we can go in and say someone has sat on a pile of bricks for the past 20, 15 or ten years, has done nothing with it and there are no planning applications involved.”
“Planning permission was granted by the council for the site and for a supermarket in Blarney, which would be ideal because it needs an additional supermarket to cover the area from Tower to Blarney. There was one objector, the lord of the manor next door, and now the person has to pay the residential zoned land tax because it is a derelict site. This is despite planning permission being granted on the site and the person having to go to An Coimisiún Pleanála and judicial review. Surely the developer, who is anxious to break ground on the site and who has entered competitive dialogue with the local authority regarding affordable housing to help us and the Government bring up our housing stock and reduce our housing crisis, should be exempt from this tax.”
“Something that was very well brought in was the refurbishment grant. It is a great system but, unfortunately, it is not working to its maximum. The payment structure is wrong. It is very slow to pay out and it is difficult to negotiate and get through. It needs to be sped up and we need to put more investment into it. I want to speak about the residential zoned land tax. It is important to mention this in the debate. Some people love to say developers and builders are the worst in the world and that they are trína chéile with this fellow, that fellow and the other fellow but not every developer is a bad guy, a bad agent or a bad actor. I know of somebody in Blarney with residential zoned land who went to Cork City Council for planning permission.”