Mattie McGrath
Tipperary South · Independent · Ireland
“The loss of the double child benefit payment and other cost-of-living supports has come at a time when families are facing rising bills across every aspect of daily life. Parents are not just paying for education. They are paying more for food, energy, insurance, childcare and gach rud eile.”
“Parents also face substantial bills simply because they are required to buy specific items from a specific supplier. That is not fair and is not a balanced market either. There is no good reason that generic uniforms or PE clothing cannot be used in most cases.”
“Maidir le hUisce Éireann, cad a dhéanfaimid feasta gan uisce? The situation in south Tipperary has reached crisis point. Since January, the Ardfinnan regional water scheme has experienced 58 water supply interruptions, affecting 11,000 customers, while almost 28,000 homes and businesses were placed on a boil water notice in a single week.…”
“Music education is a perfect example. Some schools provide excellent music programmes and opportunities for students to learn instruments and participate in assemblies. Other schools offer very little.”
“I, too, am glad to be able to speak on this motion today. I compliment Páirtí an Lucht Oibre for introducing it. While we often the cost of education in terms of books, uniforms and transport, the reality for many families is that the financial pressures associated with rearing children have never been greater.”
“They say it would be great to have water to be affected by a hosepipe ban. Uisce Éireann is totally out of control. Two weeks ago, the Tánaiste gave me some hope here that the Government might do something. Uisce Éireann is not acting for anybody.”
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“I, too, support this motion. I would question some aspects of it but the theme of it is very important. Are we going to abandon our forefathers and foremothers, people of our heritage? We had the Éamonn Bulfin Legacy Pipe Band from Argentina in Tipperary at the Liam Lynch national commemoration cúpla bliain ó shin. I thanked An Post because it obliged by giving the band a tour in there and allowing it to play in there. It was a wonderful occasion. I refer to our Irishness, culture our heritage, "tír gan teanga, tír gan anam", and our soul. Where is the soul of this Government? I believe it is all over the world. Where is the Taoiseach tonight? Is he in Timbuktu, or somewhere in Japan or China? It does not matter. It is not Tipperary, Cork or Ireland.”
“They are worried for their children and grandchildren with the activities that are going on. I am bewildered as are they. We might say it is a small thing but fundamentally it is unfair. We always have a debate about how property tax in Dublin is much higher than it is elsewhere but as we can see from the indexes and all of the different reports, such as those from Daft, house prices are going up and that means the property tax, no matter what band someone is in, will go up. I am fundamentally opposed to it. We need to look at legislation to see if we can get more powers for the local authorities to stop rogue developments taking place right under people's noses. They cannot do a thing about it nor can we, as public representatives. It is a sad state.”
“They are contacting me, Deputy Murphy and everybody else. These are all decent, hardworking people. Some of them are retired, some of them are sick and some of them approaching old age and they want to live quietly. They receive no protection from the State. They are waiting on the council in respect of enforcement. It is going through a process while shoddy people come in, do what they like, build and move illegal vehicles on to a site in front of them. These are lovely people who paid their taxes, worked and supported every charity and their neighbours. They have the spirit of the meitheal. They are bewildered as to how powers cannot be applied in respect of an illegal development right under their noses. It cannot be stopped and has to go through a process. When will it stop?”
“With all of these things, people ask what services they are getting. This is the problem. Last year during the snow people could not get an eggcup of salt. People should be getting something for this. These people had to house themselves. They got mortgages and built their houses themselves, used direct labour or whatever. They paid planning fees, development charges and everything else. There might not be much between the different bands but it is a lot at €20 to €23. What services and supports do people get from the State and what protections do they get from the State? I know of a group of people living in a lovely area outside Clonmel, Giant's Grave. There is illegal development taking place. Machines are being seized by the Garda. Such development is going on but the people are powerless.”
“I will not go into the waste all over the place but there is the OPW and the children's hospital to name a few. People are put to the pin of their collars, especially ordinary people. I am not talking about the people Deputy Doherty referred to who earn €100,000 to €200,000. They are well cushioned. Ordinary people cannot afford this and these are the people who pay for everything. They pay all their taxes and they pay for their kids to go to college and the school fees. The cost of medical insurance has gone up. Inflation has gone up. The Minister made lots of soundings that there will be no further supports for families to deal with inflationary costs. The Minister is imposing carbon taxes, which I fundamentally oppose, making it more expensive for people in this area as well.”
“I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to speak. I support this amendment because this is a matter of choices. We can talk about the election and who did and did not get into government and what the results were. The fact is that we have a squeezed middle. The Minister's former leader was always talking about them - the men and women who get up early in the morning and go to work. They are particularly squeezed with the cost of living. I know there are a lot of soundings about it. I attended the committee meeting yesterday along with the Ministers, Deputies Donohoe and Chambers, on predictions for the future. All of us are worried as are families who are trying to send their children to school, pay fees, put food on the table, pay bills and stay above water. They see the waste and the carry on in government.”
“I welcome the Minister. The motion regarding the Offences against the State (Amendment) Act 1998 and the motion regarding the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Act 2009 are being taken together and are related. I call the Minister.”
“They took control of that, with their claws around it, and squeezed out the ordinary, local voluntary organisations, which is not acceptable. We need a massive rethink. Dismantle the Custom House and make it into a homelessness shelter or something. Get the mandarins out of there and get some common sense in there. Builders ring me every day of the week about Irish Water and An Bord Pleanála. I got a call last night about a Bord Pleanála inspector who did a report using ChatGPT. Imagine. Where are we going to end up next? Now we have changed the name. I love the Gaeilge, like the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach, Deputy Mairéad Farrell, but changing the name is not good enough when there is systemic rot in those organisations, in the Custom House and in An Bord Pleanála.”
“Flats like those in Ballymun were built in Germany but the latter are in pristine condition. Some of ours are demolished or falling down. Properties are not being maintained and people are not encouraged to have pride in their houses. The housing of the wonderful Caisleán Nua Voluntary Housing Association, with which I am still involved – I spoke to the chairman on the phone about something – is in pristine condition. The residents are very happy. There are little niggly bits and there always will be. It is one of the most joyous things I was ever involved in. We need to support the small voluntary housing associations, not the likes of the Peter McVerry Trust and many more housing agencies, which have turned into huge conglomerates. I was on the national body for a number of years so I know.”
“They all do their best but there is utter failure. Was it Einstein who said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting to get a different result? That is what is happening here. We have a nice new acronym for the role of the new fellow brought in to move mountains – another job with a brass plate and a big office and a team of people under him, but doing nothing. Let us give the local authorities the powers to build. We had a borough district council in Clonmel that was abolished by Fine Gael under that wasteful plan it had for putting people first. It put people last. We had in the past a team, whom I salute, of builders and maintenance men, and the stock was being maintained. Now I believe there is just one person in the whole borough of Clonmel. That is not good enough. Dublin was alluded to.”
“What kind of electoral democracy have we such that we cannot have Ministers who will challenge this and the Secretaries General – I have nothing against any of them personally – in their fiefdoms? I have skin in the game because I was chair of a voluntary housing association that built 17 houses – 14 and three. I saw all the delays, the supplication and the six different departments all over the country that just pass paper around, keeping people in jobs doing paperwork. If we want to build three or four local authority houses, we have to get a design team and consultants. Why can we not have but one scheme and just adapt for each site? It is a pure racket. This is going on and on and there is no sign of it changing. We have had more housing Ministers since I came in here than we have had hot dinners.”
“I support this motion. How many more motions and debates are we going to have to get some realism and reality applied to the disastrous situation in which we find ourselves with regard to housing? It is organised mayhem. Every speaker – I had a chat last night with my colleague in south Tipperary – states housing is the number one issue. Our clinics are bogged down and there is so little we can do. There is so little output. In this regard, consider the whole HAP disaster. Billions of euro have been spent on it that should have been spent on public housing. We lost our way here as well. During the War of Independence, the Custom House was attacked. I do not want anyone to be injured now but the Custom House has to be dismantled. The deep rot and systematic failures in it are intolerable at this stage.”
“We must not demonise, attack or demean them for questioning our immigration policies and the greed that is involved now with the people who are getting into the industry in a caring role, mar dhea. We have a great record in this country for caring, with our diaspora - brothers, sisters and everybody else - having gone all over the world, including to third world countries and those experiencing famine. We now need to have a proper policy on inward immigration here and allow people who want to be involved to be involved, but not the greed merchants who are there to make vast millions.”
“Deputy Connolly mentioned fidelity to the nation. That has gone a long way down the line and our Taoiseach and other leaders here can be questioned on that. He is interested in parliaments all over the world, as is the former Taoiseach, but he is not interested in the issues at home and he has a béal dúnta on the issue of migration into this country - inward migration. The Six Counties - I would love to have all Thirty-two Counties - is like a sieve, with people who are not entitled to be here coming across the Border. That is very wrong. It is like an elephant in the room. We have closed our ears to it and will not deal with the problem and listen to the people out there. That is the rock we will perish on. We must listen to people who have concerns.”
“Maybe we should consider having a constitutional review of the role of President. If the President differs on anything or steps on the Government's toes, it is not accepted. We need a President who will look after all of the needs of all of the people of Ireland. We should strive to have an evaluation of how the Constitution is serving us in that area. I am not criticising it but maybe it is time to update it. As for diaspora living abroad, of course I believe they should be entitled to have a vote. Many of them chose to go. We see young graduates going in their droves, which is a pity, but many of them still want to have a say and they have the aspiration to come back here. One meets people who have been living in America or other places for 20 or 30 years and are still anxious to come back to their native soil.”
“In this age of technology why can we not have an automatic rectifying of the register when somebody passes away? There is nothing more hurtful when a family receives a letter from An Coimisiún Toghcháin, as well as many other letters and surveys and everything else, for a deceased person. It is shocking and not good enough. I know some efforts were made this time but, for last year's local and general elections there should have been a shorter or more up-to-date closing date before which people had to register. People should be able to register online with their PPS number up to 24 hours before the election. There is apathy and a low turnout of maybe 58%. One must ask why that is. We see now there is no great interest in standing for the presidential election at this time.”
“We also have to turn our eyes to the low turnout in elections in the South. We must also examine the perilous state of the electoral register. It is in a terrible state. I thank the people in south Tipperary County Council who I and my office deal with regarding corrections to the register. There is nothing more hurtful or annoying to a family than if someone has been deceased for one, two, three or maybe ten years and his or her name is still on the electoral register. It is unforgivable that death certificates are not linked up with the electoral register. What is wrong with this country that in 2025 there cannot be a synchronisation with death certificates? One's birth certificate is a very important document and one's death certificate should be also.”
“It acquiesces and allows it to go forward but that is as far as it gets. It is left on a shelf gathering dust. That is not a good idea. Motions are agreed and people think they have got somewhere but they have not. As we know, the former President Mary McAleese and the late Martin McGuinness, both of whom were born and reared in Northern Ireland, stood for election to the Office of President, with and former President McAleese serving for two terms. It is a bit farcical that a citizen living in Northern Ireland can stand for election here but cannot vote in a presidential election here. We need to examine that. Maybe we could put our toe in the water with the presidential election and see what type of appetite there is in Northern Ireland for people to participate in electoral democracy down here.”
“I am delighted to speak on this issue and thank Sinn Féin for tabling the motion. As we know, most parties in this House and in this country say they are in favour of a united Ireland. They say they are in favour of many things. It is nice to say. I want to put it on the record that I am fully in favour of a united Ireland. I come from a republican family. My late dad was in the War of Independence and spent 14 months of his life in Castlerea as well as time spent on the run. We salute him and the many people like him for the freedom we have. It is a pity we were not able to do all of it at the time. He opposed the treaty and I think it was a bad job as well and now we have that situation in Ireland today. I am disappointed that the semi-new custom has come into this House whereby the Government decides not to oppose motions like this.”
“I would say money or something else is changing hands. It is not acceptable. We have made a commodity out of healthcare and that is totally unacceptable. We must dismantle HIQA and Tusla and set up some reasonable organisation that will look after people.”
“Everybody was shocked and disgusted at what we saw in the recent television programme but it is the tip of the iceberg as regards big business and what is going on with big conglomerates. I salute all the care workers and nurses in the small nursing homes in Carrick-on-Suir, Clonmel, Cahir, Cashel and Tipperary town. I salute them and the work they do. I challenge HIQA. It is not fit for purpose and has not been for a long time. It is the same with Tusla, which cannot even count the children in its care who have gone missing. HIQA is totally unfit for purpose. I saw how it bullied a nursing home in Carrick-on-Suir out of business some years ago by restricting the number of beds it could have open until it would do what HIQA wanted. Why can we not tackle this with the big conglomerates? There is fun and games going on here.”
“The Minister of State, Deputy Michael Moynihan, is not in the Chamber but, to be fair, he is doing his best and he has insisted that the NCSE engage with the school because there is goodwill there. The community council wants to provide it and the building is on the same campus. It is a unique situation. However, these people had the expectation of a place but now it has been pulled. The same happened in Bansha, although maybe it had not gone as far, and Killusty. I know Deputy Michael Murphy raised this last week as well. We need engagement with the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and we need the NCSE to be fair here and acknowledge there are five children in the school.”
“It is a pity the Minister of State has just left. I want to raise a situation about a special class in Ballyporeen school in County Tipperary. The principal there, Mr. Shane Molan, and the community council have come together. The community council purchased the old school. They upgraded it with a grant and are willing to give it at a very low cost - a nominal fee - to the school. Six children were enrolled in this class, and they had approval. The National Council for Special Education, NCSE, stated that there is only one child in the class. Five have qualified from the school for the special needs class. They have been left in limbo and it is so late in the year now.”
“There were four sergeants but I think there is one now. Clonmel station is trying to cover this. We see what happens at peaceful protests, such as the one in Dundrum when the IPAS residents were being moved in. I was there myself and we saw what happened. We had the siege of Dundrum. Two hundred gardaí, from the riot squad and dog squad to the equine unit and God knows what, arrived. Consider the cost of this. At the same time, a house was burgled in Cullen, about 15 miles away, and no garda could be got. That is the norm. Therefore, there is overkill when it suits the Government. What is happening is not acceptable. It is not safe to have gardaí on their own covering the kind of area in question.”
“I thank the Tánaiste for his reply but it is simply not acceptable that we are standing still. As I have put to the Commissioner before, officers, be they male or female, are put in danger if they are sent out on their own in a patrol car to all kinds of incidents. We saw what happened to Garda John Walsh after he had to go out on his own. Please God, he will recover. It is terrible that gardaí must go up and down boreens in the middle of the night on their own. Some days, there are no gardaí available in Cahir or Cashel stations. These are tourist towns, never mind all the villages in the hinterland. It is just not acceptable and not fair to the Garda members who are in the region doing their best. The lack of cover in Carrick-on-Suir would be laughable if it were not so serious. There are three gardaí in a town that used to have 18.”
“Those are the facts of it. More urgently, will he commit to an adequate increase in gardaí numbers for south Tipperary so that rural people can feel safe in their homes? This is not just about statistics. It is about real people - farmers, shopkeepers and families young and old who no longer feel protected in their own homes. It is also about front-line gardaí who are doing an excellent job, to be fair to them, with no back up. They have no resources. Indeed, we saw two gardaí quite seriously injured - Garda John Walsh, an excellent garda in my area, who was savagely assaulted - and I wish him well - and Garda Philip Ryan. There are 12 gardaí in the Cahir-Clonmel district out sick. That happens and it is unfortunate, especially if they are injured on duty. A lady garda was injured recently.”
“He was a wonderful officer who returned to his native Cork and I thank him for his dedicated service for the previous ten years to the people of Cahir and Cashel. One came and we lost one, so we are standing still. All of this is happening while gardaí are being trained in their hundreds in Templemore and going to the east coast or to Dublin. They need gardaí too but we cannot have them in Dublin at the expense of the rural areas. Does the Tánaiste accept that south Tipperary is in the grip of a garda manpower crisis, not just a staffing issue but a public safety emergency? How does he justify the decision to shift the Garda headquarters from Thurles to Ennis? Will it be returned or will the decision be reviewed? Can the Tánaiste tell the House exactly how many extra gardaí came, although I just told him? Only one extra garda came.”
“Meanwhile, drug activity is creeping further into rural communities and towns and criminals are getting even bolder because they know the situation. They know the numbers of gardaí are not there. However, what really beggars belief is the Government's decision to push ahead with the disastrous new Garda divisional model, which has resulted in Tipperary Garda headquarters being moved to Ennis, County Clare. That is a mad decision. This is centralisation gone daft and the consequences of the plan are plain to see - confusion, lack of local knowledge, demoralised front-line members and communities who feel abandoned. We have now learned that of the 120 gardaí who graduated last week, one came to south Tipperary and one left the same day, Garda Michael Cussen.”
“Today, I want to speak to the Tánaiste about the escalating crisis in policing across south Tipperary, a crisis made worse by the deplorable policy of neglect, under-resourcing and mismanagement by this Government and the previous Government. In communities across south Tipperary, from Carrick-on-Suir to Clonmel, Ardfinnan, Cahir, Cashel, Ballyporeen and Tipperary town, people are telling me they do not feel safe any more. They do not feel protected. We now have a situation where a single garda can be covering multiple towns and parishes, particularly at night. There is no back-up. There is no visibility and there are no patrols. The doors of our smaller, rural stations are rarely, if ever, open.”
“Where a business needs employees from abroad in order to carry out its business, where those people are qualified and meet all the criteria, there must be a streamlined process in order that businesses can get them in . They make a huge investment and the driver, operator or whomever may not come at all or might leave after a short time. It is a risky business for employers. They need these people. The Minister must cut out the red tape.”
“I do not believe those figures. They do not reflect my experience. People come here illegally and get all the treatment, including free housing and everything else. The message the Minister is giving out is to penalise those who play by the rules. Multinationals can get away with stuff as well. This affects small businesses. It is not just the hauliers; it is also agriculture and hoteliers trying to get people in. They pay the money and go through the system. It is so bureaucratic, and the Minister is telling me it takes 19 days. That is simply not happening. It is not the case in Tipperary, certainly. People are not telling me lies. The process needs to be streamlined.”
“This process can take up to two years, with costs racking up every step of the way. At the end of it, the driver may not even be allowed into the country.”
“It was not too long ago that the Minister of State was on this side of the House. I wish him well in his new position. He is aware that the situation faced by our licensed hauliers is disgraceful. Hard-working Irish businesses are trying to operate legally only to be choked by a lot of regulatory issues and a dysfunctional recruitment process. It is unbelievable. If a haulier in Tipperary in my constituency or anywhere else wants to hire a qualified driver from outside the EU, for example, South Africa, they must wade through a nine-stage bureaucratic minefield and deal with five different departments. The process involves licence exchange agreements, a mandatory 28-day labour market, visa applications, work permits, PPS numbers, residence cards and CPC modules. The list goes on.”
“What steps is the Minister for trade and employment taking to deal with the huge delays relating to the bureaucratic system that companies in Ireland face in trying to get work permits for foreign applicants? I refer especially to the IRHA and many other industries - agriculture, to name one - and parts of industries. Has the Minister met with the IRHA to discuss these issues? The ongoing delays are crippling the economy.”
“We have the experience with the bedsits. We wiped out a thousand of them with one piece of legislation or a statutory instrument. We thought it was a great idea. People were living in these bedsits. People would be far better off living in those bedsits - many people were so happy in them – than being out on the street, with Fr. Peter McVerry or wherever. It is time to refocus. That is why it would probably take a national government, although that is not going to happen. We need national imaginative focused development. The Government should start by cutting VAT and taxes and try to accept it is an emergency rather than talking about it. It should try to do something to build houses and allow the people who can build their own houses to build them. They are being nobbled and stopped.”
“I heard another Deputy attacking me a while ago saying I never had a policy paper. I have had plenty of policies and I have done the work with other people. I could not do it on my own. They are not even listening to that because they are going nowhere. We need to sit down together on the housing committee. I was on the housing committee for five years but honest to God, I ran off it because if talk and debates would built houses, we would not be short a house. We need action. The time for the words is over. We need common sense above all else. An focal scoir. Many small, ordinary landlords tell me they are out of the game. What we will be doing with this legislation taking away so many houses beforehand. The magic thing might happen afterwards, or it might not work, but they will flee the market and that is what we do not want.”
“If the county council decided it wanted to build four houses in my village tonight, it would have to go to tender for architects. Surely to God it could have a template for a four-house scheme and it could apply to all the villages. They would have to tweak it to the sites but why do we have to have all that bureaucracy, the appointment of architects and all these stages? We have lost our way. We need to open our eyes and ears and cut out the regulators and all the regulations. I am not saying to build things without council planning - of course, we have to have planning – but we have tied ourselves up in knots. All the well-meaning things we are doing here will not do it. We have the left ferociously opposed to the views of the landlords but we need to come together, the whole lot of us. Ní neart go cur le chéile. This is too serious.”
“The madness came in during the 1990s and in the boom and we got bad buildings. They were very bad buildings and we still have them. With all the regulation and all the standards, we are still getting bad buildings and defective buildings. How can we allow the children’s hospital scandal to go on for this length of time? We need a total re-evaluation. I am sure there are visionaries like T. K. Whitaker and people in the Minister's vein. I know they have some good ideas, they are interested and they want to make a difference. How many housing Ministers have we had? How many housing Ministers have stood here and said they were going to build so many houses? It is not happening because it is convoluted and we are convulsed with paperwork, architects and design artists.”
“It went through all those stages, back and forward, pushing paper. I think that has been cut to about three but it is still way too slow. The council will send something but it will take three to six months for the Department to look at it. It then goes back to the council. It goes up and down and around the houses like the man on the radio years ago who said "Round the house and mind the dresser". I forget his name but he was a great presenter on the radio. That is what is going on and we cannot build the houses. We are spending and gobbling up the money on all those things. We have created quango after quango. Every time I see something here a new office is set up or a new outfit is set up. Trim down the outfits, cut away the waste and allow the councils to do it. They did it in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.”
“They cannot do anything. They have a willing developer and a site but there is no capacity in the sewerage infrastructure. They cannot do anything; their hands are tied behind their backs. We are blindfolded and muzzled as well. That is the problem we have to break - the red tape, the bureaucracy and the legions of NGOs. Many of the NGOs are costing the State a fortune and are getting their oars in as well. All the fellows with brass plates outside their offices are pushing paper. When building those houses, the late TD Noel Davern helped us out, and I will never forget when he phoned me to say we had been approved for the money. A couple of stages had to go through the Department. After that, it went to seven different places, between the county council, the Departments of the environment and housing and different offices.”
“The council was building in the same field and there were four winters with houses with no roofs on them, with contractors going bust and everything else. Support the ordinary basic assisted housing associations rather than the many big conglomerates that have grown up. There are around 300 of them around the country building 14 or 15 houses. If every parish built ten to 17 houses, that would make a nice dent and the elderly would be happy in their own villages. However, now most villages cannot do that because the sewerage infrastructure is at capacity. When I was going to school, a septic tank was built and it is still there. It is at capacity now and we cannot build anything else. Councillor Máirín McGrath and her group Positive Steps want to build a special unit for adult children with disabilities but they are caught.”
“We have a great man in Tipperary County Council, the newly appointed director of services for housing, Jonathan Cooney. For a long time, I was the chair of a voluntary housing association, Caislean Nua voluntary housing, but I am the vice chair now. We built 14 lovely houses. We had a public meeting after the horrific beating of a man of 95 years of age. Thank God he is alive. We decided that rather than curse the dark, we would light a candle. We were told we would not be able to build these houses but we negotiated with the council and got the site. Some 11 lay people, not one engineer, not one architect or not one solicitor, built 14 houses. We had to hire all those advisers but we built them. Thankfully, we did it in about two years even though we were told it would take five years.”
“It is a case of “I’m all right, Jack” and of pulling up the ladder on everybody else. Go back to basics and put away some of these grandiose powers and call it an emergency. Get rid of VAT and these taxes, not forever but for five years. Do something meaningful. What happened with the mica? The big businesses - the Minister knows who I am talking about - the block companies or the cement companies should have paid the money there. We added 5% to the price of concrete. What does that do? It automatically adds to the price for everyone putting in a foundation and doing plastering. It is on every bag of cement you buy. We have all these big plans but we forget the little things. If we thought of all the little things, went back to basics and got it sorted, it would be a big help.”
“Now little fiefdoms have built up and people are all watching their jobs, promotions and space. Governments come and go but they are still there - the permanent government. If we were serious, we would wipe VAT off houses. Between VAT, planning charges, fees to Irish Water and road charges for anyone building their own house, it is more than half the cost of the house. We would get houses built if we had common sense. We cannot build houses by taxing the people. There are at least 20 couples in my constituency, some of whom are farmer’s sons and some of whom are not, who have sites and a reasonable amount of savings for a deposit but they cannot get planning because of this, that and the other, and An Taisce and other bodies are sticking their oar in as well. We have all these well-heeled organisations that are wreaking havoc.”
“We have to call in the Secretaries General of the Departments because they are and should be accountable. They have not been accountable across the board. A couple of years ago, a Secretary General was asked to move from one Department to another. He kicked up and got an extra €60,000. Secretaries General are well paid. They should be accountable. They are the Accounting Officers as well as everything else. They are not accountable currently for costs, waste and the fact that there are voids and everything else and many other issues. We see how we cannot build the children’s hospital. We do not have a light rail network. We do not have a transport link to the airport, and God knows how many more things. How could we do all of this stuff back in the era of Lemass? There was the likes of T. K. Whitaker and visionaries in those Departments.”
“Instead of this Bill, we should treat this as a housing emergency and go back to the State providing houses by stimulating contractors. I am talking about the big REITs and the big outside people who came in and bought all the properties. We should tax the hell out of them because they have done nothing only destroy people. Rather, we should stimulate the local contractor and deal with the planning laws. We should tell the Planning Regulator to take a holiday or send him out to do some other job in the Middle East for two or three years so that we can go back to the basics. We need to keep the zoned land we had. What did rezoning land do? It meant that the land that was left zoned saw higher costs. Kindergarten children would not do this.”
“I was raised in a house of nine, including my mother and father, thank God. Three or four workmen were in the house every day. People lived in cramped conditions. When my parents got married, they lived in a room in someone else’s house. Now, however, we want a magic wand to get rid of all the people who supplied those bedsits, the Airbnb and the short-term lets. We are going against what the Government is aiming to do, that is, provide houses for people. The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. As far as I am concerned, we have too many advisers and too many people on every radio show and everything else who claim to know everything about housing and how to house people and what to do. There are basic things we need to do. We must go back to basics.”
“Although some people claim otherwise, there is not a magic figure. Regarding bedsits, I remember there was a big furore in this Chamber, maybe from the left again, about bedsits being terrible because there was only one bed. There was a roof over people’s heads. There were a thousand of them in this city alone. Bedsits were wiped out overnight with a piece of legislation. Many of those people were made homeless as a result. I asked the question whether they were better off in the bedsit, albeit a small, cramped one with everything in the one room? They were happy there and people were happy to provide that service to them. Bedsits were banned because we had to be so upright with all these standards. We could not have these dastardly things anymore. We have to get real and crawl before we walk.”
“There are two things in this regard. First, the council decided – I tipped him off at the time because I was on the council – that thatched houses were going to be on the register. That meant that you could not do anything with them and just had to maintain them, but the councils did not give any grants for that maintenance. While they might have given a couple of hundred of euro, that would not pay the thatcher for two days. The lovely restoration of many old farm houses and other houses is at risk. People are petrified. The Government thinks there is a magic wand and that it is going to get a massive supply of houses, but it will not. People will not give them up. They are going to let them go back into disrepair again. That is the rock the Government is going to perish on.”
“Plenty of fresh air flowed through the houses, yet people lived, had families and survived. They were not frozen with the cold or at the doctor every day sick either. We have lost our way in many areas. Regarding the whole situation of short-term lets, such as Airbnb, we are going to wipe out an industry. It is an industry. I call it the cottage industry mainly. Many people have farm houses. There are a number of them quite close to me. They are derelict. Big families were raised in them. Nine people went to the school in the morning in the one I am talking about. There was nine of them on the same road. They were a fine family. They are all married and moved off and the farmer has a new house on the land. There is a lovely, thatched house there, which is doing a great job. It is pretty busy. He did it lovely.”