Mattie McGrath Blasts Antashka and Greens over Planning Power

I have to laugh at the last speaker because it's so nonsensical and fascical. I'd directly put a question to you and your family members. How many objections have you put in in Bray and Wicklow? You stopped the air show. You stopped the air show going ahead in a lovely seaside. Will I be given the opportunity? Can I just speak all this? One person can be sent me. He might tell us sometimes. The Planning and Development Bill and Tashka Bill 2034 is based on, I asked a question, not an allegation. It's well known and brave what you're up to. I will speak to the bill. I will speak to the bill. And I want to thank Beena O'Donnell, our research and policy, and indeed Maria in our office for putting forward this bill. In an effort to help the people of rural Ireland, who the last deputy has dismissed that we don't know anything about anyone. We're Neandertans, Gambians. This is why our country is such a state with the Green influence over this government. It's interesting this morning that not one, Ian, Tochter, Juan, or Fianna Fáil, you're in the chair, came into the chair, no Fianna Gael, no reason to be. Look at it. Fáil Fáil Fáil, we have a housing crisis here. The Minister, I won't be unfactual. He had to be here. He had to be here. So, that's the way Ireland is. We talk about housing, and we talk about the crisis, and everything else. And then, Deputy Conley, I'm very surprised with her conflating our bill. It was sort of accidental that it came the same day as the government decided to guillotine the Planning Bill. We had nothing whatsoever to do with it. We have huge issues with the Planning Bill, huge issues, us and rural Ireland, and he's part of the government, the Greens there. The last five years now, in the final days, there was all the ministers, as I said yesterday, who are denying people democracy rights. They didn't publish the Planning Guidelines. Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael promised, in each of their manifestos, both parties, before the last two elections, Kai, you're one of them as well, you're an independent in the chair, the Planning Guidelines, they published them. They didn't publish them. Why didn't you now? Because I think you wouldn't allow them to be published. Just the tail is wagging the dog with the Greens. The tail has been wagging the dog for too long, and the damage that you have done, and the damage that you are friends in Antashka, and none of you declared either whether you're members or former members of Antashka, and that's the canon of the problem. Who are the members of Antashka? Antashka do excellent work. I want to complement them, and the schools program, and I've often got on the bibs, and the spring cleans, and of course they do huge work with the green flags. Of course they do. More than knowing a trucking sheet, and praise the bridge as you go over. We have to praise the good work of Antashka. They weren't there up in 1963. They were set up in 1964, which is 60 odd years ago. So it is such a sacred cow now, that we can't even ask them or amend them. We had issues with them before, our group. We looked for a meeting with them. They dictated the terms of the meeting, and they wanted to chair the meeting and control us. So they are unaccountable, unaccountable to anybody. And some of them then have moved on to be on board Panala, and as we said already, are they on board Panala and also members, or former members. That all has to be clarified. So 60 years are growing, and they can do what they like. Is that what you want to see here? So no wonder the country has been such a mess it is, especially with jeans like that, but you won't be here much longer. There might be two or three years back, and the people are bringing up what you did to the airshow, and everything else. That's why I will be back. Everything else is in business. So the people are defined in saying that, and Congress, anyone that comes back, are making the point that the damage he did in 2007 to 2011 is still being wreaked in New Zealand. And it's a force that can run. You've done serious damage. You wouldn't allow the planning guidelines to be published. Why else will Fianna Fáil say now, or Fianna Gael say, when they go to the doors of the people in rural Ireland who can't build a headhouse, who can't build a house for their children, who can't build farm developments, and the damage he has done, and they'll blame the Greens, and Fianna Gael blame Fianna Fáil. But the people are sick and tired of this. 60 years, Nantashka is there, without any amendments, or any rain check, or anything else. And what happens in negotiations like that? Of course, they get hijacked by cranks, as someone said, my colleague said earlier, and by people with issues. Serious issues. Serious objectives. And that's what I'm talking about. And the whole body, that's why we had a meeting with him, was about to plant in Kilkenny, the Lombia plant. It was passed, and by the EPA, impeccable records, passed by both Panola, and Nantashka told us, and told the public, in fact, that they had no issues with the planning of the plant itself. But they had an issue with the cow herd numbers in the country. Just imagine, then, the warped thinking, that they would object to a plant that was going to give 250 jobs, top quality jobs. And while the objections were going on, and several court cases, milk was being transported up to Stratawine Dairy, back into Cork and different dairies. No talk of the footprint of those trucks. The nonsense and the abuse of power, in that case alone, by Nantashka, was reprehensible, despicable, and disgraceful. Even the teacher at the time, who was in your chair there, Minister Noonan, said that he called Nantashka to stop their behaviour, because you had no issue with the plant, but yet you were able to hold it up. Is that a proper use of power? So, of course, Nantashka has good uses, but they need to get us free and tell us who are on it, who are the secret societies, like the Ku Klux Klan, like the Freemasons. We don't know who they are. Is that what they are? So, I mean, we don't know anything about them. Is that it? So, the secret society, and you're always on about the developers having too much power. So, the power they have then, as a prescribed organisation, to be notified of every planning. Of course, when there's listed buildings and protected structures, they have an entitlement, and we are for the entitlements of any citizen to object if it impedes on them. And there was a determination recently, a couple of years ago, that people that could object about Penola, if they had objected earlier to a situation, provided it impacted on them. I have no problem with anyone object if it impacts on them. But, well-heeled people sitting behind computers, sending objections all over the country to developers. To Farron and Kondi Korki, and his hundreds of desktop objections put in. This is where we need to tidy it up, and we need to have Nantashka accountable to the people. Not the sake of cows, I said, like the rocket cattle. They can't be moved, they can't be questioned, they can't be asked. Yes, I saw what happened in Timoraine, my own county, where houses were built hanging into the lake. Who owns them? And then, anybody else wants to get a house? Locals, not at all, they objected left, right and centre. It's disgraceful, it's far removed from what they were set up for. They were good, I'm sure there were good reasons why they were set up in 1964, 3 and 4, but the way they're behaving now. And, again, I'll talk to Spree Smith, how dare her insult and contradict a wonderful, impeccable deputy, a hard-working deputy from Offaly. Does she know where Banahar is? Was she ever in Banahar? Did she go get his mind on the way in a diesel-golding van with Barney in the back? And that's how she drives, she tells us all about it. Karen Nolan has entitled the court from any former MP, anybody else. She does her research impeccably with her assistant David, and how dare her. So, look, we're here now, we're going on the fair right, we're going on everything else. We are representing the people. We're talking to the people, we're talking to the people, and we're entitled to represent the people. But the problem here is, you're not representing the people. You're representing an elite group of your supporters, and you'll find out where they are when you go knocking on doors next week, and a couple of weeks to come. An elite group, an elite group, that's where you are. And you object to meaningful projects to allow social promotion, people to live and promote families in rural Ireland. You're against everything in rural Ireland, and you think everything, and a capital in is choked up. Deputy Hilly Ray mentioned about the airports, or somebody else mentioned in our group. Why do we have to have all the planes into Dublin, a choked city? Why don't you support water for the airport, Deputy Cossack? And we have, of course, Shannon and Cork totally underlies. So the tail is wagging the dog. This is a group of well-heeled individuals who just have a position of power. As I said, they have roles, and they're very important and good at them. But they've widely abused the power here, and it's time they were reined in. But the backbenchers of Fianna Fáil, Fianna Gael, and indeed the others, parties there, but the regents in the community at all, won't have the power to tackle a pernicious problem that's there, stopping people to get houses on themselves. We're here for Sinn Féin then, they don't know whether they're with this or for it, but that's not unusual anymore, Sinn Féin, they don't know where they are, they're on a spinning top. But ye, ye at the moment then, want to stop people building houses in their own land, in their own community. I met a farmer in Dunderham two weeks ago, and he had four sons, and he's quite a sizable farm. Sorry, three sons and one daughter. None of the four of them could get planning on their own land. In the name of God, in a house in Christ of 15,000 plus homeless, and then he wanted to bring everybody in from Timbuktu all over the world, and throw them into Ireland. Bring them all in, and have no health care, have no school places, have nothing else for them. What has gone wrong with ye? Shame on ye. No, it's not shame on me, that's what you're doing. Reckless policy, overseen by your minister as well, your minister in the cabinet, leader of the Green Party now, and it's shocking what you're doing to rural communities, in Dundrum, in Ross Cray, in Thorn Mill, and all over the country, and you're doing it every place else as well. But here you are, you protect your own members here today, at all costs. Protect the members of Antarctica, because the Green Party support us. My God, what about nepotism? You lecture us all then, it's such nepotism, it's such, it's actually broadly uncorrupt, but look, we don't know who's on it, and we can't question them. Sacred cow, sacred cow, and all we ever strive to do, and it's in the Bible and the Gospel, is do good, if you can't do good, don't do anything bad. People say here that we're trying to do damage, or attack, I think you mentioned the word attack, ten times in your speech, in your three minutes or more, we're attacking nobody. We're trying to preserve a decent standard of living for people in Ireland, town and country, that can't build their own house, when you can't provide a house, when you put blockages everywhere, stopping building houses, and you're a failed entity, a failed policy, and the sooner the limited cheeser calls the election, the better, because you have ruined this country. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.