Danny Healy-Rae: Urges Property Tax Review, Slams Wasteful Spending

I'm glad to get the opportunity to talk about this very important motion here this evening or statements or whatever, because it's a very important topic and people talk a lot about it, people who can't ill afford to pay it and who are often in trouble and it gives them great trouble, people who are going from hand to mouth and have only barely enough to cover the costs of everything and put food on the table and keep heat or whatever and I feel that it's going to facilitate the crowd with the very expensive houses, the houses of over a million euros and that would, I have to say, even though the value of houses has gone up everywhere and the cost of houses, if you're buying one, it's an impossibility. The cost and the rates that houses are making now, it's a tax on the family home and yes, we do get services out of it but I often wonder is the money divided out fairly and is there real accountability for it within the local authorities and I know it gives some local authority members a lot of anguish and I see where this is, the CEOs are giving facility now to raise it by 25%. I don't see any facility, if there was a downward need, there's no facility to bring it down any bit and you see there's certain things where many people don't get much for the property tax, street lights and we had incidents in Kerry this spring where the lights were lighting in many towns and villages, Kilgarven, Castle Island and Scotland Scotland, so much trouble and it took months to get them repaired. I don't know what was wrong but people were continuously giving it to us in the nick that we don't even have the street lights anymore for the safety of people walking to the shops and that. Minister, we used to have a facility before in Kerry County Council where if there was a road in a bad state and there was five councillors in our area, actually six, and you could nominate two roads sometime in July, it was just to happen. Roads do fall into repair that are disrepair that are not on the three-year roads program and it happens, lorries or whatever, bad weather, frost and sometimes heat can lift the tar and leave the roads in a desperate state. But that was abandoned or abolished in 2012 and it was because the country was in a desperate state financially but that has not been restored to the councillors and it gave the councillors a bit of, you know, a bit of power and it made them feel wanted and needed and that they could respond to the requests of the people. That's sadly missing and I'm asking that that be brought back. Many people, as I said, are in poverty and they're very poor and they're struggling to put food on the table and it gives them a lot of trouble and I feel for those people and I feel there should be some way of assessing ability to pay and more often than that these people are in local authority houses, a lot of them, and then if they look for little repairs to their houses and the council are the landlords and such but they seem to not have the money to do much repairs at all. And you see, the other thing then we see money being wasted at the present time, Kilgarvin, the village that I left here, left at 6 o'clock this morning, there's two council houses being, there were voids, they were lived in up until last November and the roofs have been taken off of them, the chimney is taken out of them and they're putting in this air to water heat system and I feel that's a waste of money where there was an open fire and I were lady these times very upset because the council have taught her in another village that they're going to revamp her house and this is what's going to be done with it. All I want is my little fire, she said, and I want, I'm glad to have that, it's very causey and I can see, I put down the fire and I get satisfaction out of that and keep it going all night and all I want is to be left to fire. You see, that's a waste of funds when we could turn around the house much quicker and people just basically, some people just basically want a home, they don't want to be roasted inside, maybe there's more heat out of the heat pump and maybe the electricity, maybe it costs more in the run of the year because that's left going longer, the electricity I understand has to be left going, so I feel we're wasting money in certain instances that we could do better with and there was a house in Clarny, Martin's Terrace, it was vacant for five years and it's costing way more to put in these heat pumps and do all this work and rather than do the necessary things and ensure that people are comfortable and that the house is painted and liveable, but doing this extreme, this extreme revamping of the heat system, I mean that was the Greens' idea, but they are no longer in power, Minister, and I'm asking you to take over and ensure that money is not being wasted in this regard, much the same with the money that's being wasted in Fosse, narrowing the road. The DIN 72 started out on the Ring of Kerry from Kilada, then two vehicles now can't meet and the actual footpath and the cycleway are wiser than the road itself. You'd often look at, they're still walking there, when you'd be held up and you'd size it up, you could go down the inside of the road, up on the footpath and on the cycleway with any kind of a car or a vehicle and it's way more safer and more room there than inside the carriageway. There's things like that happening, Minister, that are hurting a lot of people. Thank you, Deputy. And that concludes the meeting.