I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important Bill. I echo what the previous speaker, Deputy Nolan, said regarding Tailte Éireann and the email address we were given. Like me, the Minister of State is from a country area and will, therefore, have heard the saying, “Playing handball against a haystack”. That is what trying to deal with Tailte Éireann is like. The registration system is simply not working. I have cases, as other Deputies will have, where there are delays with registration. I would like the Minister of State and his officials to take note of this, because there is a real problem. I have a case of a young farmer who has to change the plot of land the farmhouse has been on for the past 200 years. The title is in the name of a previous landlord. That landlord is long gone, and the title has to be changed into the farmer's family name. He farms the land around it. He owns that 90-acre farm, but he has to live in a town eight miles away. He is living in private rental accommodation with his young family. He is a young, active and progressive farmer, but there are constant delays with this. Solicitors are even on to us inquiring whether we can do anything about it. Something has to be done. I will provide an example. Ten years ago, whenever I had a case in Laois where there was a difficulty with registration and I needed to contact the Land Registry, I phoned the office on Cork Road in Waterford and asked to be put through to the Laois section. The phone was always answered, which was fantastic. I gave the folio number and if the staff were not able to solve the issue there and then, they came back to me within 24 hours. They never failed in that regard. They did their best. I understand that there are procedures to go through, such as the notification of interested parties or parties who may have an interest in property, but this email system is like trying to play handball against a haystack. I ask the Minister of State and his officials - it comes under the Department of local government and housing, as far as I know - to sort this out. Someone needs to do something. There are some good things in the Bill. Of course, there have been concerns about judicial reviews. We cannot have a situation where project after project is delayed unnecessarily, particularly by people who are not affected and who may be objecting for other reasons. However, I defend the right of affected parties to have the option of taking a judicial review as a last resort. That may include people who own adjoining properties but who do not live in the relevant area. More particularly, it is about those who live in the area. I support tightening this up and ensuring that it does not unduly delay projects that are badly needed. The concept of having key towns is good and makes common sense. Obviously, we do not want to see smaller towns and villages suffering as a consequence of what is being done in this regard. I will come back to that point before I finish. If we are going to designate key towns, they must have essential services, including jobs, health and educational services, school places and sports and leisure facilities. They cannot be just a series of housing estates dropped in fields around the edges of towns. That is important. Some Deputies indicated that they welcome the certainty with the county development plan process. While I definitely do not want to be delaying these things for too long, I have concerns about the ten-year duration. I was on the council for the makings of a couple of county development plans. One problem I see with this - it could be an unintended consequence - is that we could end up with variations to county development plans. We will have material contraventions, which can be carried out within the period of county development plan while awaiting a new one. I have been there for those. Two weeks ago, Laois County Council implemented a variation. I have the new plan in my office. The variation is as big as the plan. Effectively, it is a new plan. This is something that the Minister of State needs to take on board. The other thing is the role of the councillors. The briefing note from the Department outlines the engagements it had in this regard. It states, “The Department and the Minister engaged with the County and City Management Association [fair enough], the Planning, Environmental and Local Government Bar Association [that is all right too], the Irish Planning Institute and the Construction Industry Federation”. Engagement with councillors is not mentioned. There was no engagement with the representative body of local government. Why was the Association of Irish Local Government not contacted? The Local Authorities Members Association was not contacted either. Year after year, with every issue and piece of legislation that has anything to do with local government, councillors are never contacted. I remember raising this kind of nonsense with Phil Hogan when he was Minister 15 years ago. Councillors were forgotten about. No one, not senior officials or anyone at a senior political level in government, thought it fit to speak to councillors. That is what it says in the briefing note and that is an omission. That is the other concern I have with ten years. I see the need for certainty. It is a six-year process at the moment. Fair enough, we could go to seven or eight years but ten years is a lot. It is a long time. We will finish up with an unintended consequence of material contravention to the plan having to be brought before the councils on a regular basis, as well as variations. The variation made in County Laois is a positive one. It was needed. The Department and the Government requested it and the councillors and management obliged. The councillors got it fairly right. They put a lot of work into it along with the planners. I want to highlight that. Regarding apartment sizes, what are we going to do? Are we going to keep going until we have people living in shoe boxes? Before I came in here I measured 32 sq. m in my office, so I know what it means. Part of my office in Leinster House is 32 sq. m. That is lunacy and it is really unfair. I know the developers wanted it and the Construction Federation of Ireland has been hammering on the Minister's door for a few years to try to extract more profit. The Minister of State will say a lot more apartments are being built now but there are a lot of other reasons for that and we all know what they are. This means more profit, less space and the position of renters and people trying to buy their first home being diminished. Some 32 sq. m is awful. Some 76 sq. m for three-bedroom accommodation is awful. Has anyone here ever lived in a house of 76 sq. m? I lived in a house that was 57 sq. m and it was very small. It is 32 sq. m for a two-bedroom house. A three-bedroom house of 76 sq. m is awful. It is not fair to people. We have to start thinking about quality of life. Profit has won out in this country over everything else. On the rural planning guidelines, in general I welcome what has been announced this week by the Minister. We do not have all the details yet. We need to be careful that we do not end up with scatters of housing all over the place. People who genuinely need to live in a rural area for work reasons or who have a family connection should be allowed to do so, subject to considerations such as environmental and planning regulations, etc. Laois County Council has operated close to that model over the years. However, it is a missed opportunity, and the Minister of State may tell me he will come back to this. If we want rural development done properly, we need to build up, along with the changes in the guidelines. As I said, we need to be careful. We do not want a turbo-charged bungalow blitz, although we want to facilitate those who genuinely need to live in a rural area. If we want to do rural development properly, we must build up and consolidate the cores of our villages. If we want to create and strengthen rural communities, we must have living villages. The Minister of State knows that in his constituency as in mine, there are many villages which are not living villages. The shop is closed and the post office, service station and Garda station are gone. If we want rural areas to play a significant role as well as address the housing crisis, we must have strong village structures. That has to be part of and central to any housing policy. I support genuine efforts to speed up the delivery of and to facilitate housing. Too many of our villages have been hollowed out due to a lack of new housing and opportunities to live in them. There are huge benefits to living in a rural village. Young people can walk to school and people can walk to the local pub, church or sports field. In nearly all villages, there is now a bus link and that is important. If we can consolidate the cores of villages and get people living in them, children can walk to school and people can walk to the local shop, pub, church or sports field. As I said, most villages have at least a limited bus service and that reduces the need to always use a car. In villages people have neighbours and family support, often nearby. If a person needs home help services when they get elderly, it is easier to provide it in villages than it is way out in the countryside. Importantly, in villages people also have access to utilities, which also reduce a person’s carbon footprint about which we are all concerned. One-off housing does not have that. I am not against one-off housing. In general, I support what is being done in relation to the policy on those who genuinely need to live in a rural area. However, we need to be careful not to cover the whole place with unnecessary rural housing. I am arguing instead to consolidate the cores of villages. This needs the councils to zone land close to the centre of villages. There cannot be leapfrogging. There are too many examples of leapfrogging over the years where ten fields have been missed and then half a mile up the road there is a new housing estate with no footpath, no public lighting and a long distance to connect sewers. It is expensive to do that and the car is still used to get to the local shop. That is not the way we should be doing it. These houses should be close to the centre of the village. This means zoning land for private and public housing close to villages and local authorities building, where needed, small clusters of social housing. There are some good examples of that but we need more of them. I suggest that councils develop serviced sites, and there are a few good examples in County Laois. Castletown is one example and Ballyroan is another. Sites, roughly a quarter of an acre on the edges of the village, are sold at cost-price to people in the area who want to build their own modest house and have a reasonably-sized garden. The Minister of State knows that many people in rural areas are self-employed, and they might have a van, a trailer, JCB or something like that. A person cannot bring that into a housing estate but if they are living on the edge of a village and have a quarter of an acre of a site, that is the problem solved. This fits in with the lifestyle. I ask the Minister of State to take the example of Ballyroan in County Laois, which has ten serviced sites developed by the council. Since we zoned land there in 2006, the Cross of Newtown, the Glenbrook estate and Gleann na Glaise, which is a council estate, have been developed there, along with the ten council serviced sites. Everything is in three or four minutes walking distance to the school, church, the pubs, all of which are open, and to the GAA and the soccer clubs. The other day a fantastic new playground opened. That is the type of development we need to see. I can show the Minister of State villages where that has not happened and where the whole village has been hollowed out. Many of the villages need a small wastewater treatment system or what the one they have to be upgraded. Some of that will come by way of development levies but some of it will not and will need funding. My point is that is one way of doing it. I argue that if we are serious about rural development, along with making it possible for people who have to live in a rural area to build a one-off property, we have to build up our villages and connect them with public transport. A start has been made and it is working well but there is more work to do. Every county has a network of villages, which could help us to solve the housing crisis. I accept that the vacant property grant is working reasonably well. We are not getting any complaints. That is how I know it is going all right. If it was not working well, people would be complaining about it. It is bringing houses, including some in rural areas and villages, back into use. I mentioned Tailte Éireann. I would say it is like playing handball in a haystack. It is absolutely frustrating. The Minister of State is a Waterford TD. Ten years ago, if there was a problem with a registration or property and a constituent or their solicitor were getting nowhere with it, they would contact me to see if I could do anything about it. I would ring the Land Registry in the Minister of State's constituency, on Cork Road in Waterford, and ask to be put through to the lease section. Someone would answer the phone, if not the first time then I would get them an hour later and they would address the problem immediately. They were very helpful. Now we have an email address and we might as well be doing something I will not say in the Chamber. That is the point I am making. There are some good things in the Bill, such as the judicial review measure, but we need to be careful with people who are living in the locality. The change to apartment size is the one I have a real problem with. I measured 32 sq. m in my office to see what is involved before I came to the Chamber. It is tiny. It is not fair to ask people to live in accommodation of that size. Three-bedroom accommodation of 76 sq. m is awful. We need to start thinking about people's quality of life. At the same time we are doing away with the common spaces. We cannot have it every way. There is not going to be any storage or common area, yet a family is going to be confined in a three-bedroom apartment of 76 sq. m. That is not good enough. That is the piece I have a problem with. Everybody has got their way - the Construction Industry Federation, CIF, the investors, the developers and everyone else but tenants and purchasers who are paying big mortgages and high rents are the ones that are suffering.

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