Mattie McGrath: Modular Homes Cost Nearly €500k Each

Go raibh maith agat, Minister, I think that you've lost focus completely, and you've allowed yourselves, governments are being led by the nos, by the NGOs, and whoever else makes up these nice policies. We all advise you not to bring in that legislation recently about private landlords. It's as if landlords were kind of a dangerous club. There are some horrible landlords, and the bigger ones, especially, have no time for them. But the policy in that area is very strange, too, because Waterford County Council, I know, and Port Panola recently, and a few cases where they went to them for large groups of housing estates, they put in a stipulation that these houses, the first owners, would have to remain in them, that they couldn't be bought up by the REITs and by the others. So you laid out the red carpet for them, and you didn't support your own. Then you laid out the red carpet totally for the Ukrainians, and for God knows who else that comes from all over the world. We were called all kinds of names when we mentioned it, and pointed out the mistaken and foolish policy, unsustainable. Just to think the Minister in Clann Minnan-Owen, you built 40 modular homes. And I sat down with the OPW, with the builders, CISC, and with representatives, and the integration department's integration team, and I was guaranteed that these modular homes, which are probably worth 80,000 at best, would be finished for 200,000, not a penny more, because we discussed everything, site, topography, water, electricity, everything else. And they've now ended up costing almost 500,000 per unit, 496 in fact, and nationally they've cost 450. This is an absolute travesty and a waste of money, and how any company, and so CISC in this case, could get the whole 11 sites, I think, in the country, and got 450,000 per unit. You'd build the finest house in Tipperary, or any other county, for 450,000 of concrete. So Minister, the other area then, when you had the problem with the blocks, and the cement, instead of making the companies pay, and the big companies, I won't even name them here, but we all know who they are, an international company, who now I believe have moved their headquarters, actually, and their funding and all off the stock exchange here, gone to Holland, I think, and you put it onto every cubic meter of cement. So cement's gone up by 30% this year. Iron has caused a lot of that, but you have put it up by putting that charge on there, to repair for that, for rogue suppliers and bad supervision that allowed them to do that. So Minister, I think it's just an unbelievable situation. You know where I think there's a golden egg here, under the nests of the short-term let's of the small, the people who got into holiday homes, what's the name, I'm running out the name, just one company, you know what I'm talking about, Airbnbs, just couldn't think of it. I have people beside me, farmers, who did up the old houses inside in the farm yard, they could never rent it to anyone because, long-term, because it's an active living farm yard. I have a woman down in Drummond, Tipperary, same story, she's 30 years old, inside in the middle of her farm, and you think you can force them to give these into local authority rents, for people to rent them long-term. It's a folly. You believe, I think there's probably 10 or 20,000 of these you can get back, you're going to destroy another industry, in our cottage industry, grew up as mainly, you're going to just wipe that out now as well. So all your policies seem to be trying to wipe out industries here, and we'll be left with nothing on a bus, because that's the policy you're bringing in here, and the left party's here clamouring for, to attack the landlords. There are many incidental and accidental landlords, good people, who educated their children and put them through college, for having the second house that they got left, or they inherited some makeshift farm, and you've all them passed down as rogues. You have the RTB then, who are useless to defend, they're not fair. I don't expect if you and that landlord want to repair, they should be brought to book. But when you have tenants that wreck a house, destroy a house, and won't pay rent. Someone lately in my office told me they forgot to pay the rent for the last four months. Forgot! I mean, so look, and the RTB wouldn't normally come down on their side, so slow, and feeble, and ineffective. As with most of the other bodies that you have out there, regulatory bodies, with the stamp on the wall, and the big seats, and push-offices, and board members being paid, and they're not effective. They're toothless, useless, and fruitless. So Minister, I don't know, I wish you well to commit to this, I thought you'd do something pretty good, and only last week, Superior County Council, and I asked you to look at it, past emotional, last Friday evening, to not 52 perfectly strong houses, well-built houses in Tipperary. It's an absolute travesty in this day and age.