Martin Kenny
Sligo-Leitrim · Sinn Féin · Ireland
“A debate here for a couple of hours is fine, but I remember being involved in some of the deep talks with people in the early days of the peace process. We sat in rooms and talked about reconciliation. I met Garret FitzGerald on many occasions at the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation.”
“Of course, we have the areas of natural constraint payments that most farmers on this side of the Border avail of. Unfortunately, those payments are no longer available in the North. Sinn Féin has recommended that the payments should be restored. Farmers need support. Brexit took their support away.”
“I welcome this debate. Such a debate has been needed for quite a long time. The reality is that for many people, the issue of the financial implications of Irish unity has been used as a put-down to try to smother or put a stop to argument and debate. This is a welcome way in which we can open that up.”
“I hope Government will reflect on that and recognise that we need to build a process. There is an energy for reunification among ordinary people the length and breadth of the country. This is about the physical constraints, but is also about identity. Many people who live on this island have a British identity.”
“As the Taoiseach is aware, for many years people with mental health issues have been attending emergency departments in our hospitals. Many of them get very poor outcomes. They experience long delays and end up on trolleys. Sometimes they are referred for short-term stays or to community services, which offer little or no service.”
“I appreciate all that and the farmers forum is a positive advancement on things, but we are back to the problem at the very core of this issue, which is that the chair of Bord Bia has been using imported beef from Brazil as part of his mix to sell product.”
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“We cannot avoid that reality. While we welcome and want to accommodate people fleeing conflict and situations in which they would have their human rights denied, we recognise that, while they enrich our country, there are those with a very negative agenda. That has to be fought against. The Irish people stand wholeheartedly with the people of Ukraine against the aggression of Russia. We want to see peace come about. We all know that peace can come about only if the aggressor accepts that peace should prevail. It is certainly the view of most people that until Vladimir Putin feels strong economic pressure, he will not relent. That pressure must come from all countries, not only those in Europe.”
“We need to be firm on this and recognise that vested interests do not want war to stop, very often with tragic consequences for so many. The Irish people have played their role. Very many families opened their hearts and homes to people from Ukraine and were enriched by that experience and by having Ukrainians in their communities. That welcome must continue. Sometimes I hear a backlash in some of our communities and all sorts of negative comments about people who come here from Ukraine or other countries. We must be very conscious that only this week a man was convicted in the courts of the murder of someone simply because he thought that person did not speak English. That tells us we have a huge problem boiling under the surface in this country. We have to address the problems of racism, Islamophobia and other prejudices.”
“We have had talks and new dawns promised, including at the Alaska talks, and peace was supposed to be coming but it has not come. It has not because ultimately Putin does not want peace; Putin wants to continue the war. Unless an aggressor accepts that they have to stop, retreat and go back to the negotiating table, a war will continue. That has been the tragedy for hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine. I have often thought that if the hundreds of billions spent, through the war industry, on the Ukraine war alone were spent on health services or anything positive for humanity, it would make such a difference. Instead, we have genocide in Gaza and genocide in Sudan, which is going to continue. Such conflicts are feeding an industry that is making huge profits from them. That link is not pointed out often enough.”
“Many of those people have become part of communities in different parts of the country and have been a huge asset. Many I have got to know have told horrific stories of things that happened to their families back home. One man I know from my community told me his sister was killed in the very early days of the war. Since then, three members of his extended family have died. All were civilians. In conflicts like this, the people who suffer most are usually civilians, and that has been very much the case as a consequence of the brutal aggression of Russia against its neighbour. Of course, Vladimir Putin is basically a fascist dictator trying to expand his power and grow his influence. It is clear that he has to be stood up to. Unfortunately, with the change in regime in the US, we do not see as steadfast a line being drawn there.”
“Like many of us, I remember when we woke one morning in February 2022 to learn Russia had invaded Ukraine. In the first week, everyone wondered what would happen and believed the Russians would roll over the Ukrainians very quickly. What has happened has proved otherwise, and it is certainly a tribute to the resilience and courage of the Ukrainian people that they have held up for so long against what would always have been considered a huge global military power and that they have been able to fight back and hold the line. Of course, they have done that with the support of many, none more than the people of Ireland, who welcomed thousands of them here. In the first few weeks, many of us worked with people we knew or got to know from Ukraine to help to bring families here, accommodate them and work with them.”
“As bad as it is for those of us who drive a car, for those driving vans and trucks and delivering food and so on to shops, it is even worse. That is going to put more pressure on the cost of living because, at the end of the day, it is the consumer who will have to pay those costs. If the Government is serious about doing something about the cost of living, it needs to support this motion and act on these issues. Coming in here and telling us the Government is doing its best and that things are not as bad as we are trying to paint it is not going to work because ordinary people know what they have to pay. They see it every week when they put fuel in their car. They see it every year when they get their insurance premium. They see it every day when they go through the toll roads. They need help from the Government, not platitudes.”
“I have a young family, several of whom are driving now. They started in the last three or four years and getting insurance costs them €1,700, €1,800 or €2,000 to insure a car. It is very debilitating for young people starting off in life to face such high costs for insurance. We were told a couple of years ago, when there was big pressure to bring down claims, that bringing them down would bring down insurance premiums. It did not happen. This is a reflection on a Government that is not up to the job that it needs to do in putting controls on these industries that profiteer off the backs of ordinary people. The other issue is the tolls. We all use the toll roads every day of the week. We have no option but to do so. This is a huge problem because you have to pay every time you go through a toll and it clocks up all the time.”
“It is so disappointing that when people are under such pressure that the Government does so little to try to help them out. People who are driving in rural areas - I represent a rural constituency - have little option but to drive wherever they need to go, whether it is to a hospital appointment, to work or to bring their children to school. Everything else in rural Ireland has been cut back and squeezed down. At a certain time of year, all of us will have people on to us about school bus transport. The children who would have got a bus to school when we were going to school cannot get the bus any more and their parents have to drive them to school. At the same time, people see the price of fuel going up all the time. They also see the price of insurance, which was mentioned by many contributors. I certainly know about it.”
“He is violent and dangerous. When he comes home, he does not take his medication. The man refused to take him home. The HSE services put his son in a taxi and sent him home anyway without a care plan, without any medication. These dangerous situations need to be dealt with. A lot of them are dangerous because the service is not up to the standard it needs to be to provide care for people who have acute mental illness. A lot of those are men, unfortunately. These issues need to be dealt with. I have raised that case with the Minister of State specifically because I know of her remit in regard to mental health. However, we really need action in respect of all of that.”
“This situation is totally unacceptable and we need to do something about it. He had to travel to Galway but he has no transport. It costs him €300 for a taxi to go to that appointment. Those are the kinds of issue that people have out there. That is why a lot of men do not say anything when something is wrong. They hear these stories. At the same time, though, we have to tell these stories because we have to get action on them. I also want to talk to the Minister of State about mental health issues. I raised with her several times previously the case of Jimmy Loughlin in Sligo, of which I know she is aware, and what happened there. I hope to hear something back from her very soon in respect of that. However, I have another case of a man in my constituency who has a son who is in the care of the mental health services.”
“On 1 September, we finally made more representations in relation to it. At that stage, he had lost two stone in weight. He was getting very worried and very anxious. He had the biopsy on 16 September and now he is in the system. The point I am making is that it takes so long for people to get into the system. In fairness, that used not to be the case with cancer patients. Usually, they were dealt with efficiently and quickly. We have another situation that is very similar. We will call this man "B" for Bernard. Again, he was referred for a scan for his prostate. He waited from 14 April. He had a phone review on the results. Again, they told him he would need a biopsy to proceed and, again, the waiting list continued and continued. He has been waiting 21 weeks to get the biopsy.”
“I want to raise with the Minister of State examples of two people in my constituency. One constituent, who we will call "A" for Albert, had a history of cancer up to about ten or 15 years ago, so that history was there. He attended the outpatient medical team in University Hospital Galway in March of this year. He was seen, and they said he had a prostate issue and that he would have to have a follow-up and need a biopsy. Nobody came back to him. He contacted the consultant's office several times. The last time he made a call to them, they told him that there were no theatre slots available at that time to have a biopsy. At the end of May, we made representations in respect of this and he was put on the cross-Border medical care list. At that stage, he had been waiting for 12 or 14 weeks to get the biopsy. Nothing happened, though.”
“We all know men can be very reluctant to do anything about their health. Very often, they suffer in silence until it is too late to help. That is both their physical and, very often, mental well-being. We also recognise that men are 34% more likely to die from cancer than women, and that is because they seldom seek help in time. They wait and wait, and there is a little bit of that macho element there. That is something that needs to be dealt with and needs to be acknowledged as well. Waiting lists are getting longer for everything across the country. That is one of the problems we have. When people get a scare or have something wrong with them, a lot of them think to themselves that nobody will be able to see them anyway. That has a knock-on effect on the long waiting lists we see across the State.”
“That serious problem requires serious attention and this is why as much effort as we can put into it needs to happen. That should certainly be the case from a financial perspective. However, there are also changes that can happen, such as the stuff about Irish products being classified as Irish without using Irish ingredients. That issue needs to be dealt with. There is also the issue of feed for our animals. An awful lot of it is imported from outside the European Union. This is something else that must be dealt with.”
“When prices around the world were very low and that meant grain would flow into Europe from other places, the protection in place meant it could not come in. When prices rose, less protection was applied. There was, therefore, a system that ensured the industry was kept right. It has been taken away and this is a serious issue that must be dealt with. The Minister also mentioned the quality assurance scheme. A big effort needs to be put in to ensure we put a proper quality assurance scheme in place to provide for the tillage sector across the length and breadth of the country. He mentioned the big meeting, where we heard that up to 1,000 farmers attended. They would not be out doing that if they did not recognise there was a serious problem in this sector.”
“The sector requires support to prevent the loss of jobs and a further reliance on imports of grain, flour, vegetables and so on. We really need to put in the effort to ensure that this whole sector can come up to the mark and provide the kind of resilience needed within it but farmers will only invest in this sector if they can see there will be an outcome from it. We had representatives of the tillage industry before the agriculture committee a couple of weeks ago. Matt Dempsey was one of the people who headed up a committee on this issue recently. He made an interesting point. He said the change in EU policy away from one that facilitated the production of grain in Europe was something that happened about 20 years ago. He is talking about the fact that a little bit of protection was put in place then.”
“The tillage sector, though, also faces rising costs for machinery, fertiliser, sprays, etc. The Government has committed to there being 400,000 ha by 2030. It is unlikely it is going to meet this target. The 2025 target has not been met. A big part of this, obviously, is the viability of the industry because of the situation we are in with regard to the prices farmers are getting for their products. Sinn Féin would provide proper funding for the tillage and horticulture sector. We need to see this proper funding put in place. These farmers are farming a product that has a much lower carbon footprint than other farming practices. It needs investment and to be able to expand. We know the tillage sector is in crisis. Even straw prices are on the floor.”
“There are, of course, significant challenges in the tillage industry. Grain prices have been on the floor for many years and cheaper imported grains have been coming in from all over the world. We have very high-quality beef and dairy products and much of the feed used in these areas comes from Latin America. There are issues relating to food security, etc. that need to be considered. Europe as a whole has a problem in that we are not producing enough protein within the European Union. This is an issue that needs to be dealt with and one of the opportunities to do that is through the production of grain. Tillage farmers have been priced out of the market. This is certainly the case in the rental sector in a lot of areas mainly because of the dairy sector.”
“It is not a requirement that Irish whiskey or spirits use Irish grain to be classified as Irish. This is an issue. I am not saying that we should have 100% Irish grain in these products, but there should certainly be a percentage of it for them to be labelled as Irish. I understand there can be volatility. The total amount produced can be weather dependent and harvests can go up and down in different years, so this may mean there may need to be imported grain at different times. Between 2014 and 2018, grain imports for the drinks industry ranged between 50,000 tonnes and 135,000 tonnes. Irish farmers have mainly stopped growing grain for human consumption, for example, in products such as flour. Ireland imports the majority of its flour. Around 69% of it comes from the UK, 11% from Germany and 8% from France.”
“It is also important in terms of employment and is estimated to support up to 11,000 full-time jobs or equivalent jobs. The Minister of State also mentioned the vegetable sector. I understand there are between 4,200 ha and 4,500 ha in field vegetables annually, which are valued at €73 million to €76 million per annum. Ireland is about 60% self-sufficient in vegetables, so that means we have to import 40% of the vegetables we eat in this country. This is something else we need to look at from a food security perspective. The sector employs about 1,000 people. Around 300,000 tonnes of grain are used in the drinks industry annually in this country. The volume of grain imported annually by the drinks industry is growing each year. This is an important point.”
“This is why our interconnected agricultural system needs all its sectors to be working well together. The Minister of State mentioned that other sectors have had difficult times. The tillage sector is now where many of those other sectors were a few years ago. At the moment, we have great prices for cattle and sheep, etc., but they were very poor for the past decade. The tillage sector is very poor at the moment, and we can go into all the reasons for it. The tillage sector is an integral part of Irish farming, producing high-quality animal feed and bedding for the livestock sector and ingredients for the food and drink industry. The sector makes a significant contribution to the economy, which is estimated at between €1.3 billion and €1.9 billion per annum.”
“I welcome this debate also. It is very appropriate that we are having it. We had people from the tillage sector before the agriculture committee about two weeks ago. I made the point to one of them that in my part of the country, County Leitrim, the greatest amount of tillage, which people still talk about, was during the Emergency, when compulsory tillage was introduced by de Valera. Many people are still complaining about it because the land was not appropriate at all for growing crops of the kind that were grown. Like every other sector of farming, it is all connected. Whatever people are doing, it is connected to another sector. It could be connected with the need to get straw, which they need for bedding, from the tillage industry or with the need to get grain for feed, which also comes from the tillage industry.”
“It is to turn away and say that "No, we will not listen; we will not look at the reality that people have to live through". That is the greatest scandal this Government has ever come across. People mentioned earlier that we have had light touch regulation in the past. Most of this was done through the early to late 2000s, but it went on even after that for quite some time. There are people who had houses built after the bust in the economy and they are now noticing the same problems. What we need is a Government that will recognise that what it has done to date has been an utter failure. It needs to recognise that what we are putting forward is a solution that it can work with. Government needs to work with this because it is for the defence of ordinary people the length and breadth of the country who are losing their homes.”
“That is what it is really about and that is the issue most people have with this particular scheme the Government has put in place. The countermotion it has tabled today is reinforcing that high wall it has built in front of people that they cannot get over. There are also a whole lot of other people who are in council houses or local authority houses. They see it around them, but the council will not even go and look at these houses. It will not even do assessments of them. We also have issues with commercial and community buildings, which have the same problems but again they are not included in the scheme. The fact the Government is burying its head in the sand and trying to avoid this issue has to be called out. The Opposition is calling it out clearly, and the response from Government is to block it even more.”
“I met a woman on the street in Sligo town a couple of weeks ago and she told me that she was filling in this application because her home was crumbling. She said it is as if we are pretending that this is happening to us and the Government is telling us to prove we are wrong. She asked, "Would I pretend I have cancer? I would not." People are not pretending that their houses are crumbling around them. The way in which they have to fill out these forms and the huge number of criteria they have to go through only to prove they have a problem for which they need to get proper and full redress is absolutely outrageous. It is an example and a reflection of where this Government policy is. The Government policy is not about providing for people; it is about blocking people from getting any help.”
“The motion today is supported by all the Opposition parties because they all recognise the huge difficulty for homeowners the length and breadth of the country in a number of counties, including Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, Clare and a whole lot of others. Many of the people who produced the concrete products shared them with other quarries and other providers. In many places, we will find that they have seeped into other counties that we are not aware of yet. That is one of the issues that needs to be recognised. This programme states that we can have applications from certain counties which have been approved for applications, of which Sligo is one. Only five people so far have got their applications in.”
“Will the European authorities have inspectors in the Mercosur countries? Will they be checking the product before it leaves those countries? Will it be checked on farms or in abattoirs when it comes to beef and chicken? We need detail in respect of that.”
“I will ask one short supplementary question in that regard. One of the key problems with Mercosur is that we are bringing product into Europe that does not meet the same standards as European farmers have to meet, and are happy to meet because of the high quality of the product we have in this country. Is it true that, as part of the deal, the European Union will pay Mercosur countries quite large sums of money, which would normally go to farmers in Europe, to bring their farm produce up to the standards of the European farmers? Is something happening in that respect behind the scenes to try to ensure that the product coming from the Mercosur countries will meet the standards? The other issue I want to raise relates to the inspections that will take place. How and when will they happen?”
“We can talk about the level of compensation and all of that but unless farmers are getting equal, like-for-like compensation, they are having serious problems. That is one of the biggest worries people have, namely, that when they have reactors in their herds and get the compensation, the compensation is not able to replace what they have lost. That is the one point I wanted to raise with the Minister and is something that really needs to be dealt with.”
“I welcome the movement and commitment to deal with bovine TB and the huge problem it is throughout the length and breadth of the country. A lot of family farms are locked up and there is a whole crisis around that. I gave an example last week, or maybe earlier this week, of a farmer who had written to me. He had seven cattle who went down with TB. The compensation was based on 2023 prices, so he was only able to buy four replacements for those seven cattle with the money he got. That is a big problem for a lot of the farmers out there, in that the level of compensation they get is not able to match their loss because they have to go to the mart the next week or the following week and buy cattle to replace what they have lost. The way prices are at the moment, they cannot afford to do it.”
“We need to get clarity on that. Is the Minister going to wait for the new CAP? The Minister also mentioned recommendations in the report that are already happening and stuff that has been extended. That is fine. We knew about that. Some of the recommendations have a fairly hefty budgetary cost to them. What is going to happen with those and when will they be implemented? Will the Minister wait for the new CAP to implement them? Is the cost going to be taken out of that budget too? That will be another problem if it happens because it will impact on the measures that farmers depend on today. We do not want to see that raided for the future.”
“We recognise all that. The difficulty I have is that in the past we had a legacy where young farmers were let down. We have had the forgotten farmers and all that before. It still has not been fully dealt with. I would, of course, say that from my side of the House. We need to ensure we do not create a situation where anything like this happens again. We need firm commitments to young people who want to farm that they will have the opportunity to do so and will get assistance from the Government to do so and that this will be an option for them into the future and that they will be able to see a long-term viable future in farming. The Minister mentioned that some of the proposals will be dependent on the new CAP that will be coming in two years' time. That seems like kicking the can down the road a little bit.”
“People have opportunities in the pharmaceutical industry and all sorts of other industries, where many would think they would have an easier life than in farming. That possibility is competing with farming. Central to all of this, we need to ensure that this report on generational renewal and its recommendations are implemented. When will this report be implemented? When will it actually happen? We have the report and the recommendations, but when will we have the action?”
“As I said, we are all conscious of this issue. At the moment, I think 4.3% of farmers are aged under 35. The average age is 60 in Irish agriculture, so there is a clear problem here. It has often been the case that the people who take over the farm subsequently go off and get a job, work away from the farm for a while and then maybe come back in mid-life and take over the farm. That has been the tradition. The type of agriculture we are doing in this country now means this may no longer be the appropriate methodology to use. We need to get people into farming earlier so they can build a career and build up the farm from an earlier stage in their lives. Of course, there are a whole lot of competing factors. We have a very buoyant economy.”
“I will get straight to it. I ask the Minister about generational renewal, the implementation of the report on this issue, and if he will make a statement on the issue. Recommendations in this regard were announced during the ploughing championships and people want certainty on it. One of the biggest issues we hear about when we talk to farmers is what the future will hold and if future generations will take on farms, continue farming and be able to expand, grow and if they will see a future in farming. It is vital that we have clarity on this issue.”
“I know it is premature to suggest the national budget could be used at this stage to ensure farmers maintain their income and have those supports in place. We need to see an indication given to farming communities that the Government will not let them down and that payments will not reduce, regardless of what we end up with from the negotiations. A lot of farmers are very concerned that, in the coming years, they will not get the level of support they had in the past. I will ask a question later about farm regeneration and young farmers coming into the field. They are not going to do so if there is not a sustainable future. The CAP is an absolute priority in making sure that future can be sustainable.”
“While I agree, at the same time, we need to recognise - I brought this point up at a meeting in Brussels recently attended by Commissioner Hansen - that this has the difficulty of undermining people's confidence in the EU itself. The vast majority of people across the length and breadth of this country have done well out of the European Union, as have the vast majority of farmers from the perspective that they have been able to expand and grow their farm and have good markets for their produce. Now, though, they see that the CAP budget, which in the 1980s was about 70% of the EU budget, is now down to less than 30% of it. This is a major problem because it is being pushed back all the time. We need to stand firm on the need for Irish farmers and agriculture to have a decent CAP that will make payments to them.”
“At the moment, they are getting a decent price but it is very much at the whim of the market. They need to ensure there is a base in place. The removal of the two pillars is very dangerous. Many farm organisations and farmers are very concerned that it could mean that much of the money ring-fenced in the past for agriculture could be raided for other purposes. That is what we need to ensure does not happen.”
“We are all very conscious of the proposal on the table whereby we face a 22% cut in respect of the CAP. That will have a very serious effect on Irish agriculture in addition to the entire food sector and farm families. The vast majority of our food is produced by small farm families the length and breadth of the country who depend on their CAP payments to remain sustainable. We have had decent prices recently, in fairness. This is attributable to supply and demand and the fluctuations in the market, but for years, many farmers would say it was the other way around in that they were producing food and not getting a good price for it. They had to struggle. I have always said that the best way farmers can make money is to have a decent price for their produce.”
“I want to ask about the CAP negotiations, the recent meetings the Minister has had with his EU counterparts on the progress we hope to see that will result in a new CAP being put in place in the next couple of years, and what it will mean for Irish farmers. As the Minister is aware, there is considerable concern over the extent of the cuts. The CAP is vital to ensuring Irish farmers have a base level of support. It is absolutely necessary to maintain that. Could the Minister elaborate on the progress made?”
“It is the stress and tension that this causes in a family and a household that they cannot plan for the future or look forward. They become strangled by it. That is the real cost of poverty because it has a long-term cost as people go on in life that they have a fear of ever falling back into that place again. For people with a disability, they have that profound problem with the disability they have, but then they have the extra problem whereby poverty has been a part of their lives as they grew up, and as they go into adulthood, they fear that coming at them again. If the Government is serious about having disability rights, it needs to ensure that it stands over those rights, that it actually funds the services for people but also that people with disabilities have adequate incomes to be able to live full and proper lives.”
“God forbid if they decide to take up a part-time or full-time job; they will be banished from ever applying for disability payment again. We need to invest in disability services. If someone is able to do some part-time work, it does not mean they are automatically cured of their disability. Disability payments should continue to be paid while people take up employment, and should they have to cease that employment at any time, they should automatically go back to their full-time rate of disability payment without the need to go into a full 12-month application process all over again. That needs to happen. It does not happen. When people are in poverty, it is not just being unable to buy something. It is the absence of ambition.”
“It is predicted by the ESRI and the Parliamentary Budget Office that poverty will rise for people with disabilities in the coming years as a consequence of this budget. We have a cost-of-living crisis that is affecting everyone in the same way, but for people with disabilities and their families it is far worse. They are constantly struggling. They have no disposable income and barely survive on a week-to-week basis. Ireland has the lowest disability employment in the EU. The reason for this is that people with a disability who are in receipt of social protection payment are afraid to take up part-time employment in case they lose that payment. We come across them all the time. The system is set up in a way to cut someone if they try to get work.”
“Speaking at the launch of the five-year national human rights strategy for disabled people in Ireland, the Taoiseach said it was a "landmark moment for the advancement of disability rights in Ireland." Last week, with the budget, the Government cut vital cost-of-living supports for people with disabilities. This amounts to a €1,400 drop in income for people with disabilities across the State. While the Government announced a landmark moment in the achievement of disability rights in Ireland, at the same time, the same Government announced devastating setbacks for people with disabilities and many in their households. This Government is pushing one of the most vulnerable groups of people in society into poverty.”
“That needs to be examined and there needs to be something put in place to ensure students can get student accommodation when the university wants to build it and has the land to build it on, but cannot raise the money. That would alleviate the broader housing problem as well.”
“Leitrim got €2 million for the tenant in situ scheme and some of that had to be used to buy houses from last year. That scheme is a good one and could work and provide a possibility for people but it simply has not been funded. It is a huge problem to try to alleviate the issue of people who are in houses, get a notice to quit and have nowhere to go. If the council comes in and buys the houses at least it would do something to help them. There is the issue of higher education. The Atlantic Technological University in Sligo has for years been looking at the possibility of being able to raise capital of its own to build student accommodation and it cannot do it. There is no reason it cannot be given that money. Instead the system is set up so private guys can come in and do this, but they are not doing it either.”
“We need to recognise there is a huge problem in that respect. The councils in Sligo and Leitrim do not have emergency accommodation for these people, never mind a house. Even trying to find emergency accommodation for them is a problem. Today, there are eight houses for rent in County Leitrim with an average rent of €1,400. In Sligo, there are 18 properties with an average rent of €1,600. While the rents are not as bad as in Dublin or other places, one has to take into account the majority of people living in the north west are on a much lower income. Many cannot afford those prices or have a chance of affording them. HAP does not come close to meeting the cost of housing at the moment. We have serious problems as well with planning permission across the country. In County Leitrim 66 houses were granted planning permission in 2024.”
“The town was mentioned in an EPA report this week. If an application to build even ten houses came in, it would not get planning permission because the wastewater treatment system is not up to standard. It is the same in Leitrim village, Carrigallen and many towns across the country. It really needs to be looked at. In the past week or ten days in my constituency, we have dealt with, I think, 15 cases of homelessness. This is quite unusual but it is having an impact. Families with young children, single people and even pensioners are coming in with notices to quit. They have to leave the houses they are renting and they cannot find anywhere else to go. People are ending up sleeping in cars, sharing couches with family and that sort of thing. They are not sleeping in a doorway but they are homeless. There needs to be a distinction.”
“Smaller builds trying to build a smaller number of houses find it difficult to get finance. I recently became aware of an example. A housing estate was built in a town in County Leitrim. I think eight units were left unbuilt. The bases were there. A man was going to buy them and looked to get money to finish them but he could not get it anywhere. He was told they did not feel there was a market for the houses and yet nobody can get a house and every time a house goes on the market, the cost goes through the roof. There is something wrong in the private sector that needs to be corrected quickly. Delays in planning are also a big issue in housing particularly in rural areas. Infrastructure such as wastewater services are big issue. There are several examples in County Leitrim, Mohill being a clear one.”
“This legislation comes in the context of a severe housing crisis across the country not just now but for almost the past decade, people have been trying to find a home with little success, unfortunately. The Housing Finance Agency is about providing money for local authorities and other agencies such as approved housing bodies, etc., to build houses and for higher education authorities. It is a body that is very useful in that context but money is not the only problem when it comes to building houses. It is a serious problem for private developers trying to build houses because they cannot get finance anywhere only at an extremely high cost. Often, it is a big obstacle for a lot of small builders in particular in the west, north west, the midlands and outside major cities.”