Mattie McGrath: 'We've lost our way' on housing and planning

I'm glad to get to speak here this evening on this bill. I was confused, Minister, as many others, and, you know, we have a desperate housing crisis and, look, we have failed utterly to tackle it, but, you know, we have a debate in the House and we have ideologies really coming from the left and, indeed, a lack of solutions coming from the centre of which I am always proud to represent and, indeed, the government parties. And panic has set in and I wish you well, Ministers, both Ministers are well on this, but I honestly think that we've lost our way and instead of a pressure zone talking about it here, which there is need for many areas, we should be talking about the pressure cooker of the lack of housing and the inability of the young, not so young, quite old as well, to solve the housing crisis. And it's not simple, I know it's not simple, and, you know, I have no ideological hang-up about having foreign investment and for the banks to lend, but we have to have the kind of leverage. The previous speaker mentioned over 50% of the, almost 48% of the houses, there's some government involved in them. But I don't know if I can go back to Sean Lamass and go back to those years and how we built the house, and we had no AI, and we had none of the geniuses, and we had none of the degrees coming out of our ears that we're talking about now, and we had plain common sense and hard work and hard graft, and we mentioned builders like Halley's and I'm sure John Cole, you had many of them in your constituency, and many other contractors who applied literally, hundreds of men, and indeed, my own late dad was a small contractor and built about some houses, Deputy McGinnis might like to know, and Waterford Council, and indeed Tip Council, as a small set-up, self-compliant man, I was able to build it, and built it for the Land Commission, that's not today, not yesterday. But now it's so difficult, we've tied ourselves in complete red tape, and a hobby has another of yours, Count Coulter, was, and I'm sure he had all the time, like we had zone land, we had probably too much zone land, definitely, but you've appointed, and I mean the last government here, they make up as well, the new office of the planning regulator. We never had one, and I don't know if we ever needed one, it's like all the Quangos we've set up now, with big organisations, nice flush offices, fancy offices, and a brass plate on their own, Quang, Quangaland. And he overstepped his mark completely, and I take my own, just to come in and talk to my own daughter, who was a councillor in the care district in the Timberlady County Council, and we had 60 acres of zone land, and he put it down to 10, and now the councillor grappling had ideas that had been told by the manager, we want to rezone some of that again, this is only in the last two years, and they're going to have to intervene development panels that are all made, that's unnecessary bureaucracy that was brought in there, and confusion reigned. While he went off on a tangent, there was a need for planning and regulation, yes, but he went on a tangent of de-zoning all this land, whatever, everybody thought that was going to get him, I don't know, and that's a mess, nothing short of it, and I don't know how he feels now about what you're saying, about zoning land, he made his kind of, de-facto kind of, he earned his name by this policy, a tough man, he's going to teach all the councillors a lesson, he's zoned his land, and of course, councillors could pass, do what they like, but he overruled them a lot, mistake, big mistake. So is he going to be relieved of his post, and that office stood down, obviously if we're going to have a complete change of policy that we want to rezone in one land now, again, that's fundamentally, makes his position untenable. So that's one area. The other area is, is, is, is, is, um, the Irish water, it's there, I mean, look, every town and village that I know, most of them, that I know, are not, they're at capacity, and they're having the funds, and they're costing too much money, and they're not able to fit for purpose, again, set up by elements of the, by Fine Gael, and the Phil Hogan, and they've been an unbindicated disaster, because they're not interested in local knowledge, or are interested in talking to local people, or workers that the council had for decades, and I'm with them now, they don't want to listen, they know it all. That's a bad thing, for anyone in any job, to say they know it all, and then, as I said, with the whole situation of the, of the, you have made the standards of houses so unattainable, and in fact, they're unhealthy, in my opinion, I'm not a scientist, not a medical person, but they're airtight houses, they're unhealthy, they're locked up all day, then people are going to work, and there's not a breeze going through them, but that's fine for private houses if they want that. But then, you have decided to have the BER rating. Now, I'm looking forward to having an engagement with you as another forum minister, soon I think, very soon I think, about that issue, that you're going to, somebody's going to tell the council, I understand, this is what I understand, you can correct me, what I heard was, came from cabinet, that you're going to tell the council, look, ignore that BER stuff, let's get the houses fixed for, we only have 11,000 per vide, to take back a vide. 11,000 won't do the windows and doors, minister, and maybe with insulation, won't do a full retrofit, not the smell of it, but the hope of it, and the costs of everything, the policies that you've had, especially with the carbon tax, has driven up the costs of insulation, madly, and the rising price of oil, which is about to rise again now, because of what's happening outside of our control, and those BER ratings. And the first thing you've been doing, I didn't believe this when a man came in to be from Portland, Oregon, up in the Guinness Constituency, about seven years ago, small coal, single sole trailer, delivering coal and briquettes, giving a great service to the ordinary people, and he came in to me, he said, Matthew, I've been put out of business. I said, what's wrong? Well, he said, any house kind of goes back towards the council, someone dies, or the keys go back, for whatever reason, the first thing they did was take out the chimney, sorry, block the chimney. That is utter madness. So there's a lot of things that have gone into our utter madness, the BR rating, and I know we have to seal our house, and I have to be wasting all the chimney to the roost, but we're gone over the top ridiculous, and it's taken out of the chimneys, it's shocking. And with the snowstorm last year, and we saw where people were, they couldn't buy the kettle, in these modern houses. I'd be with the day, I can't call it, you're not as old as I am, but I remember the half, there wasn't many of the houses, and you had plenty of fresh air flowing through the house. And we have, and people lived, and we had families, and survived, and they weren't frozen with the cold, and they weren't at the doctor where they seek either. So we've lost our way in many, many areas, and as I said, the whole situation regarding the short-term nets, Airbnbs. We're going to wipe out an industry here, which is an industry, cottage industry, I call it, for the main. People that had maybe a farmhouse, I have a number of them quite close to me, there were like big families, there was one I'm talking about, there was nine, I'm at the school of them all, nine of them on the same road, and they're fine family, and now they're all married, moved off, and the farmer has a new house, and this lovely tach house, and he's doing a great job, and it's pretty busy. And he did a lovely job, we did two things. First of all, the council decided, and I tipped them off the house, and the council decided that all tach houses were going to be in a register, and you couldn't do anything with them, you had to maintain them, but then they gave no grants to do them. They would give a couple of hundred quid to it and pay the tach for a few days. But this lovely restoration job, there were many old houses, fair mill houses especially, and others, there weren't fair mills, and now they're petrified, because you think there's a magic wand here that we're going to get a massive supply of the house, but you're not. They're going to not give them, they're going to let them go back into maybe this repair again. That's the rock you're going to perish on. It's not that magic figure, some people tell you it is. Also then, you can talk about, you know, the whole situation of the bedsits back here. Remember there's a big furore here, mainly from the left again. Bed sits are terrible, there's only one bed. They had a roof over people's heads. I think a thousand of them in this town, this city alone. You just wipe out overnight the piece of legislation. And those people were, many of them were made homeless. I asked the question, but if I'm better off in the bed sit, I'll be small and cramped and all in the one room. They were happy there. And people were happy to provide them for them. And next thing, that was banned, because we had to be so upright and so, um, um, um, such standards that we couldn't have these dastardly things anymore. Dastardly things anymore. And people were like, we have to get rid as well. Crawl before we walk. I was raised in a house, nine of us, and my mother and father, thank God, and indeed three or four workmen every day in the house. And people lived in cramped conditions and lived in, when my parents got married, they lived in a room of a house, of somebody else's house. But now we want magic wanders. We'll get rid of all the people that have supplied those beds. It's now the, the Airbnbs and the short-term debts. But we're going against what we're trying, what you're aiming to do, to try and build, to provide houses for people. So, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. As far as Anchor said, we have too much, too many advisors, and too many, um, you know, people on every radio show and everything else that know everything about housing, how to house people and what to do. But the basic things we need to do, go back to basics, and instead of this piece of legislation, we should have a housing emergency, certainly, and go back to the state providing houses. By stimulating contractors, and indeed, I'm not talking about the big REITs and the big outside people who came in and bought all the properties here. No, we should tax the hell out of them, because they have done nothing, only to destroy people. Stimulate the local contractor. Deal with the planning laws. Tell the planning law to take a holiday or send them out to, out to maybe do something in the Middle East or something, some other job for, for, for, for three years. And we go back to basics. Keep the zone land we had. And, and, um, what did that do with zone land? We drove the land that was left zoned higher costs. I mean, the thing is, kindergarten children wouldn't do it. Then we have to call in the secretary generals of the patterns. Because they are accountable. They should be accountable. And they haven't been accountable. Across the board. I saw a couple of years ago when a secretary general was asked to move from one day to another. He kicked up and he got the next to 60,000. I mean, they're well paid. They should be accountable. They're the accounting officers as well as everything else. And they're not. They're about the costs and the waste. And, I mean, the fact that there are vides there and everything else and many other issues that are there. We saw how we can't build a children's hospital. We see how we can't do the lightweight network. We haven't, we haven't the transport link to the airport. God knows how many more things. How could we do all this stuff back, as I said, in the era of Lamass, when we had, like, the TK Quiddigan, and visually we didn't know the patterns. Now we saw little fiefdoms have been opened. They're all watching their own jobs and promotions and space. And governments come and go and they're still there. The permanent government. So, I think we have to go back, and then we have to, if we were serious, we'd be cutting the vat, wipe the vat off of the houses. Between vat planning charges and fees to Irish water and all the rest of it, and road charges on anybody building their own house, it's more than half the cost of the house. So we'll get houses built with common sense. Okay, or we can't say that the National Post renews so much, but we can build houses and tax them out of, I almost said something I shouldn't say, Count Cawler, out of the people. Like, I have at least 20 couples in my constituency, who are maybe famous or some aren't, they have sites, they have the way we are to get a reasonable, they have been a savings, and a reasonable savings to get a deposit, and they can't get planning. Because of this, that, and the other, and several other reasons. Because Antarctica and other bodies are sticking their ore in as well. We've all these well-heeled organisations out there now, and they're causing wreck. Wreck. And I'm all right Jack, pull up the ladder, everybody else. So back to basics. Take away some of these grandiose powers, and call it an emergency, get rid of the vat and the taxes, for, not forever, for five years. And do something meaningful. What happened with the mica? Then, where the big business should have, and you know what I'm talking about, the block companies, the cement companies should have paid the money there. We add 5% to the meter of cement, of the concrete. What does that do? Automatically adds the price of everybody putting the foundation, doing the plastering, every bag of cement you buy. So, with all these big plans, but if we get the little things, and we think of all the little things, and the basics, back to basics, and get it sorted, we'd have a big help. Now, we have some great housing now. We have a great man now, our new director of services in housing, Jonathan Coney, newly appointed. I'm vice-chair now, but I was chair for a long time. I have a voluntary housing association, Cosclown Newer Voluntary Housing. We built 14 lovely houses. Eleven lay people got into a room after a public meeting, after a horrific meeting of a man, and he's 95 years of age, and thank God he's alive. But we decided, rather than curse the dark, we'd light a candle, and we lit that candle, and we were told we wouldn't be able to do this. We negotiated with the council, and got to the site, and this is a fact. Half the field of the county council had built their houses. We built 14 houses. Eleven lay people, not one engineer, one architect, one solicitor, nothing. We had to hire in all those advisors, and we built it all. We had to step in the complex, and we did it in about two years. We were told to take five. Thankfully, we did. The council were building in the same field, and they get four winters, with houses with no roofs on them, with contractors going, both of them and everything else. So, go back and support the ordinary basic assisted housing associations. Not the big condomers that have grown up, and there are many of them. The ordinary basic, there's about 300 of them around the country, 14, 15 houses. If every parish built 17 houses, built 10 or 12 houses, that would make a nice dent, and the elderly would be happy in their own villages. But now most villages can't do it, because the sewers are at capacity. And our sewers are at capacity. Since I was going to school, they said the tank was built, and it's still there, and it's at capacity, we can't build anything else. Councilor Morley McGregor, in a group of Positive Steps, want to build a special unit for adult children with disabilities. And the court can't do anything, because they have a willing developer, they have a site, but there's no capacity in the sewers. We can't do anything. Our hands are tied behind our back, and we're blindfolded, and our mouths are muzzled as well. And that's the problem, what we have to break. The red tape, the bureaucracy, and indeed all the legions of NGOs, costing the state a fortune, and getting their ore in as well, and all the fellows with brass plates inside the offices, and they're pushing paper. During our process of building those houses, voluntary housing, we discovered, and it would be good to have former TD, Noel Daverdon, who helped us out, Simon, and I'll never forget that he phoned me, I was unattractive, that we'd been approved for the money, but there were a couple of stages that had to go through the department. After that, we had to go to seven different places, between the county council, and the department of the environment at the time, and housing, to around the country, different offices, that they had to go through all these stages, back and forward, pushing paper. That was cut, I know, down to maybe three, I think now. But it's still way too slow. The council will send up something, take three to six months to the department to look at it, back to the council, further and further, and get started to get up, and down, and back, and around the house, like, around the, the man on the radio years ago, around the house, and mind the dresser, forget his name, his intro and radio. That's what's going on. And we can't build the houses. That's what's going on. And they were spending the money, and gobbling up the money, on all those things. And we have created, crangle after crangle after crangle. And every time I see something here, there's a new office set up, a new outfit set up. Trim down the outfits, go away to waste, and deal with, and allow the councils to do it. God, they did it in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. The madness came in with the 90s, and the boom. But, we've got bad buildings as well. Very bad buildings, and we have them. With all the regulation, and all the standards now, we're still getting bad buildings. And effective buildings. How we can allow children's hospital scandal to go on for that later time. So, we need to have a total re-evaluation. Total re-evaluation. Reach in, and up there I'm sure, visionaries like TK Whittaker. And people, you know, in your own vein, are trying to imagine, you know you have some good ideas, and you're interested, and you want to make a difference. And how many house ministers have we had? How many house ministers stood here, they were going to build? How many houses? But it's not happening. Because we're convoluted, and we're convulsed, with paperwork, architects, design artists, and when the county council wanted to build four houses in my village tonight, they decided they were. They have to go to Tinder for architects. Surely God, they can have a template, for a four house scheme, and it can apply to all the villages. Okay, we'll have to tweak it to the sites. Why do you have to have all that bureaucratic? And why do you have to go to all the appointments of architects, and all these stages? We've lost our way. Lost our way. So we need to open the eyes, and open the ears, and cut out the regulators, and all the regulations. I'm not saying build things, without any, you know, council planning. Of course we have to have planning. But we have tied ourselves up in knots. Absolute, total knots. And all the good meaning in the world, what you're doing here, this is not going to do it. And then we have the left, first, that he posted, using the end of the landlords. We need to come together, the whole lot of us. This is too serious. For political. I saw, or I heard someone, another deputy, attacking me a while ago, that I never had policy on paper. I have had plenty of policies, and I have had experience, I've done the work, and thankfully, with other people. I couldn't do it on my own. So, I mean, I don't even listen to that, because they're going over anyway. You know. So, we need to sit down together, under the housing committee. Now, I step forward five years under the housing committee. And honestly, I'll tell you, I ran off of it. If talk, and debates, would build houses, it wouldn't be short of the house. So, we need action. Time for the words is over. And we need common sense above all else. And I have, I have, I have, my focal score, I have, many landlords, small, ordinary landlords, telling me, they're out of the game. So, what we're doing here, this legislation, is going to, deny, is going to take away so many houses beforehand. The magic thing might happen afterwards, and it might not work. But, they're going to flee democracy, and that's what we don't want. I said, we have the experience at the bedsit, we wiped off a thousand of them here, one piece of legislation, on a statutory instance, and I can't think at the time. But, the way I do, because people are living in these bedsits. It's far better living in those bedsits, there were many more so happy, than to be out in the street, or in the Peter, or Peter McFerry, or wherever. So, it's time to, refocus. That's why, it would take a national government, probably, that's not going to happen either, but we need a national, imaginative, focus group, not a focus group, but focus development. And, the government should start off there, by cutting the vats, cutting the taxes, and trying to deal with acceptance of the emergency, not talking about it, and trying to do something, to put houses, and allow the people, who can build their own houses, to go out first and build them. They are being nobbled and stopped. Thank you, David.