I support these amendments. They are sensible amendments and they lay out what is wrong with this scheme. Although this is legislation to lift the cap and the cap needs to be lifted, the fact is that lifting the cap alone, in combination with what the Minister is proposing here, is not enough. We know what works and we know what does not work. The end-to-end Fingal pyrite scheme has worked really well. It has been effective. It does not get talked about very much. Pyrite does not get talked about much any more here because when people access the scheme, the scheme is well managed by the Housing Agency, it is end-to-end and it does not place the responsibility on homeowners. What the Minister is proposing here, however, is exactly in line with what he is proposing in relation to defective apartments, and it will not and cannot work. It disproportionately benefits people who have access to at least some financing and it disproportionately discriminates against the poorest people, the most vulnerable people, people who are in receipt of social welfare payments, people who are on low incomes and people who struggle day to day. It would be sensible for the Minister to come back in relation to amendment No. 5 and lay a report before the House of the Oireachtas on transitioning this scheme to an end-to-end scheme that provides 100% redress. There are issues that need to be addressed around mandatory foundation testing, eligibility criteria and retrospective payments. Some of my amendments were ruled out of order, in particular in relation to the arbitrary date of 29 March which makes absolutely no sense except from a cost saving point of view. To go back to a point others made earlier, this is being done to save the State money. That is why we have had this botched scheme, the revised scheme and now we have this Bill before us regarding the cap. We must also see legislative provision to hold to account those responsible for this. At the moment, every single one of us is paying for this because we all pay the concrete levy. Another important part of this amendment is extending the scheme to the rest of the country. Looking at the heat map, obviously there is a high concentration in Donegal, a concentration in Mayo and to a lesser degree in Limerick and Clare. The scale is completely under-reported. Many homeowners are extremely reluctant to come forward. Even the time it took to get Fingal onto the scheme - the bones of four years - shows it is crazy to continue along those lines. A constituent came to see me. Her house is affected by defective concrete. She lives in the heart of Limerick. She is a single mother in her late 40s. She is a significant part of the way through her mortgage. She realised her home was defective when she went to get the walls pumped as part of the SEAI grant, which exposed all the cracks. The issue now for this is woman is that she is €125,000 to €130,000 short. She has no way of coming up with that financing. She is dependent on one income and she has a mortgage to pay which is not insignificant. She is essentially stuck. We need industry accountability, retrospective payments and mandatory foundation testing. That is why, even if the Minister is pressing on with this, he must take on board the amendment and come back to us with a comprehensive piece of work in the next couple of months. Let us look at this in detail and in sincerity. As others have said, an end-to-end scheme would save the State money in the long run. We are going to be back here again, God help us, at some stage, tweaking this again because we will find uptake is low and the gap in costs widening. Construction inflation is growing and everything is going up in cost. Whatever headway is made from lifting the cap, it will be lost again and we will be back here again.

Sentiment score: -0.01

It is not at all clear to me what this amendment will do because this is something that I have dealt with in my constituency with one of my constituents whose property is a semi-detached house and the house next door does not meet the damage threshold. I do not even know how the Minister will realistically get builders to do this work. It is incredibly complex. It involves essentially splitting something that in essence cannot be properly split because what is in one block has to be in the adjoining block and the deterioration is going to spread from one to another. It seems with this amendment that the Minister is inching, if I can be generous, in the right direction but it goes nowhere near far enough. Even the idea around the "certain circumstances", in particular, concerns me because we are still going to have many people who will remain excluded from this.

Sentiment score: -0.06

Certain.

Sentiment score: 0.27

I want to go back to something Deputy Ó Broin said earlier. It goes to the point I am trying to make. I am dealing with a constituent at the moment who is in a semi-detached house. She has met the damage threshold but the house next door has not. If she can be included in the scheme and the house next door has been told it does not meet the damage threshold, by what mechanism under what is proposed tonight can they access the scheme?

Sentiment score: 0.04

I support the amendment from Deputy Ward. I too tabled an amendment about the arbitrary deadline of 29 March. I understand why the amendments were ruled out of order, because they place a charge on the Exchequer but the Minister needs to look at this again because the deadline is arbitrary. It is bad enough that the Government took a year to come up with what is simple legislation to lift the cap. Why did the Minister come up with the date of 29 March? Was it to coincide with the SCSI report? Surely the report would have looked at costings into 2023? This is about money, pure and simple. I ask the Minister to come back when he can bring in amendments in the Seanad and not to exclude dozens of families who desperately need that money because he is penalising people who applied early. They did what the Government asked them to do, which was to apply for the scheme and to get in early. This is cruel and is really creating division where there is not division.

Sentiment score: -0.02