2025-12-11

I am glad to get this opportunity. I am delighted that the Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, is taking the questions today. As he knows himself, we have not always agreed about everything, but he takes the question and he comes back and gives an answer. I hope that, on top of all the other times I have asked these same questions, something will happen now. We have a clause in Kerry known as the rural areas under significant urban influence, which I understand was to prevent applicants coming out from towns or other urban settings but is now actually preventing local people - local to their site - who apply for planning permission from getting it. Many times, I have asked here about the restriction preventing family members from building on sites exiting onto national primary and secondary roads, even where there is already an existing exit-entrance serving many other users. The problem is that if this were just an ordinary local road, there would be no problem, but the very same type of road that was never taken in charge by the local authority is being deprived of getting planning in much the same scenarios. This change was signed into law in 2012 by Leo Varadkar, a former leader in this House, and the Minister with responsibility for this, who later agreed with me in this Chamber that a total ban was very wrong. I am asking that this be given back to the local engineers to decide if the exit is safe and if the site distance is of the right standard. There is a lot of talk about affordable home schemes. We never had any one of those schemes in Kerry. I cannot understand why. I cannot understand how you can call one house an affordable house when the house beside it costs the standard price, is the same size and costs the same to build. Surely to be able to call a house affordable, the materials, the labour or the planning should cost less. I remind the Members opposite that 40% of the cost of building any house today is VAT, other taxes, planning and levies. Could the Government reduce the VAT? There is no VAT on building materials in the UK. I do not think the people are being told the truth about these affordable schemes. We have heard the Taoiseach many times say that we need to zone more land for housing. However, on many occasions when elected members in Kerry and management agreed to zone more, the regulator stepped in and blocked them, even though these lands were serviced. What will happen now where the builders could use the Government's new proposal to build treatment plants on non-serviced lands-----

You should conclude, Deputy Healy-Rae.

Just let me finish this, please. Could we say that these do not need to be zoned and only need to be decided by a planning application?

Thank you, Deputy.

Many of these places where the Government says developers could build a treatment plant-----

Deputy Healy-Rae-----

-----are not even zoned for housing, so this will hold all that up again.

I call the Minister to respond.

When does the Government propose to exempt planning permission for the granny flats-----

Deputy Healy-Rae, your time has expired, and I will just move on if you do not allow the Minister to respond.

I thank Deputy Healy-Rae for raising this. There are more times we agree on things than we disagree. Especially as a neighbour's child, I would like him to think that. On this, I agree with him. If you travel the road from Abbeyfeale to Duagh - I am sure he knows that road very well - there is part of that road in Kerry where there is a very well-developed group of houses with a single entrance out onto a regional road. It is not a national primary or a national secondary road. There is no intensification then or turning movements. That is what the roads engineer in Kerry County Council will tell you because that is what they tell me in Limerick, namely, that wherever there is intensification on a road and turning movements, they worry about people being rear-ended and having crashes, fatalities and so on. I can understand that. Where there is a safety issue on a road, we have to be very conscious of it, but where there is no apparent reason for a person being denied planning permission, particularly if it is on their own land and if, for instance, they have been renting an apartment in Tralee or Killarney and they now want to move back to Tarbert, Moyvane or wherever, it should be very clear in the county development plan policy in the first instance that such movements should be encouraged. There was a report two weeks ago with regard to the issue - I have responsibility for it - about sports clubs in south Kerry, particularly on the Iveragh Peninsula, depopulation and the demographic changes in the GAA. We will have to address it. There will not be a sewerage scheme at every crossroads in the country, but if developers can bring in their own types of solution, where it is a small scheme under the supervision of the local authority and where they can discharge to surface water with a licence from Kerry County Council or Limerick County Council, I do not see why that cannot be allowed. There would not then be the situation we have seen in Reenard and other places where they have to amalgamate GAA clubs just to put out an under-16 team. The population of County Kerry has gone up dramatically, but it has gone up in places like Tralee, Killarney, Kenmare and the other main population bases. If we are to sustain rural life in counties like ours, the first thing you have to be able to do is flush the toilet, because unless you can flush the toilet, you cannot build a house. You cannot pollute the surface water and you cannot have run-off going into dykes. There are solutions there. Rather than being told at a pre-planning meeting, as I am often told, and I am sure the Deputy is too, that there is no proper solution or there is no way around this, that the soil is too heavy and you cannot possibly sustain a septic tank or a proprietary treatment system like bioCycle, we need to start looking at engineering solutions. If a developer comes in, like in the development I referred to a while ago between Abbeyfeale and Duagh, and if there is a technical solution to deal with sewage properly, under licence and inspection by the local authority, I do not see why we cannot do that. The future of our GAA clubs and our small schools will be utterly dependent on whether we can build houses in those areas. It is not out of a lack of desire or people being unable to afford it. A lot of these are returning sons and daughters who want to live in south Kerry or east Limerick, but I agree with the Deputy that the restrictions that are there will have to be looked at.

Kenmare has been starved of private housing schemes for almost 20 years, first because we did not have an adequate treatment plant - some €40 million has been spent on that and it is fully operational - and now because we are told that the water supply is not adequate. I have raised this here before, including in recent weeks, and I want to know what the answer is. I ask again that the Government liaise with Uisce Éireann and ensure that the two current planning applications for up to 170 houses that are now in limbo are not refused because of the shortage of water. I would like to ask another thing. Back in the late seventies and eighties, people got £3,500 to build houses of less than 1,350 sq. ft. Could we bring forward a similar type of scheme to decrease the house sizes to maybe 1,750 sq. ft? Many people are building houses much bigger than they can afford, and the cost is so-----

Thank you, Deputy Healy-Rae.

I am asking as well for a new grant of €20,000, on top of whatever is there before, for houses built under that size.

I thank the Deputy and ask him to conclude.

There is merit in that. I ask for forbearance, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

Did the Deputy ask for forbearance? He is 28 seconds over his allotted time.

Kerry County Council is now building no rural cottages. It is building hardly any houses at all. It was doing great work. People got houses built on their lands-----

Deputy Healy-Rae-----

-----and when they got on their feet, they bought out the houses. That is not happening at all now.

I thank the Deputy and call the Minister.

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

The same happened in Limerick, Waterford and everywhere else. The local authorities built what were called council cottages. In many cases, they were on farms. You gave the council half an acre or an acre. That land was transferred to the council. In return, the council built the house and you rented it and later got the option to buy it back if you were a farmer. If you were not a farmer, the council acquired a site for you. It is a matter for the councils. If they want to do that, there is no reason they cannot. The most important thing they have to do is to put in a proprietary treatment system that will pass a percolation test. I agree with what the Deputy said about younger people especially who want to move back into their into own areas. There is a narrative out there that if you are building a one-off house, you are somehow polluting the area. That is not the case. I know exactly the types of houses the Deputy is talking about. Grants were given in the 1970s and 1980s for houses less than a particular square footage. Half of the people in the country were reared in such houses. The Deputy is absolutely right. Some of the houses that are being built at the moment are far too big in terms of their energy consumption. The Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, is on paternity leave at the moment but he will come back to the Deputy on the issue he raised about extensions to the rear of houses and separate units. I will ask him to reply directly to the Deputy. Many of the issues that have been raised need to be contained in the county development plans of the respective county councils. They are also matters for the Government.

The regulator is stopping it.

On behalf of Deputy O'Flynn, I welcome the Howard family to the Public Gallery. I hope they enjoy their time in Leinster House. They are very welcome.