Danny Healy-Rae: Release vacant homes - incentivise, don't coerce

Thanks Sinn Féin for this very important motion this evening. First of all, Minister, I was against the rule that he brought in a number of months ago from the 1st of March that people would have to rent their houses out for six years. I think the news that that was coming drove many people out of the market. And since sometime early last year, the amount of people that came to me that were after getting their notice to quit and their hearts were broken because they didn't know where to go, it was hurtful, Minister. And that was the reason for it. And I voted against that because I feel very strongly about democratic rights and I always believed that if someone owns a house, if they bought it, if they got it, or if it was theirs, name was on the deed of it, they were entitled to do what they wanted to do with it. And, you see, there are a pile of vacant houses there, Minister, and I asked you to incentivise people to rent them rather than forcing people to do incentivisation was the way to go. And if you realise, and you do realise, that rents, most people pay 50%, the landlord pays 50% tax on the rent that they get. And if you see many people rent their houses for less than 1,000 euros a month, they're paying half of that back in tax. And, you see, it becomes not worthwhile to rent a house in situations like that. And there's so much could be done to incentivise people to rent their houses. There's so many houses vacant, I say it again because I don't know where the real estate is at, and if he don't, it's his own business. But he don't seem to listen to this story anyway because I've asked many times before and he didn't. But then there's other situations where people who would build a house for themselves if they could get planning permission for it. And in Kerry many people won't get planning permission because a rule that the planning authority goes by that they have to, they can't get planning permission because this urban generated rule which prevents them getting planning permission to put a roof over their heads. And they're asking for no funding, or a permission to be allowed to build their house. There's another thing that's happening. All along our national routes, the secondary routes and the national primary routes, people can't access if they're coming out of even a public right of way that's not in charge of Kerry County Council. They can't, they're not allowed, they're not allowed to come out. And we've asked that several times. Former Taoiseach when he was minister put that rule in place back about 2012, Leo Radcliffe, and we've asked him several times to rescind it and change it. We're hoping that he will now with these new planning rules but I'm worried because I don't, always if he were going to do something there'd be some rumour or some word that was going to happen. These people are asking for nothing at all from me, only permission to be allowed to build a house for themselves to put a roof. They have their own, they have their own funding and they'll do it themselves and they'll borrow or whatever way they'll do it, they're prepared to do that. And we're giving them no hearing to our ministers for the last number of years. And these, it's a very simple thing. And to go back to the renting of the houses, it was no bar in the world for the government of the day to pay 600 and 800 people, Ukrainians who came here and there was no problem with that. He found no problem with paying for that but he won't do the same for Irish. Iran here, I'm not saying they shouldn't have got it but I'm saying that the Irish people should get the very same as whoever comes from wherever they're coming from. And they deserve that. And in a democracy, that's what we would expect. I'm asking to look at something like that release some of the houses, the vacant houses are all across our towns, our villages and out the country. You do nothing at all to incentivise people to get into the renting market. I'm asking, I don't, I don't think you're listening but if that's the way with you, you didn't listen before and then you'll pay a higher price if you don't listen again.