I want to speak on this issue because it will affect dozens, if not hundreds, of people in my constituency, particularly in west Sligo where an awful lot of people are now coming to the realisation that their homes have been affected by defective building materials and concrete blocks and, indeed, other concrete products that went into their houses. This is not new, of course. Donegal, Mayo and other areas, all the way down to Clare, have suffered the same. The scheme the Minister is putting forward does not go far enough to be able to deal with these issues. That is why I wanted to speak in support of the amendments because these amendments go to the heart of the issue. We are talking about making sure that people get 100% redress. We are talking about ensuring that people have an adequate sense of somebody having their back because they have been let down for so long by so many. The reason we are in this situation is very lax regulation; that is the reality. The quarries that produced these defective products have got away with it and now the houses that were built are crumbling around their owners. These people absolutely need to ensure that we can do something which will be adequate to provide for them and for their future. I have come across people in my constituency who are at the very early stages of this. They are noticing cracks and seeing things, although they are certainly not as advanced as we see in Inishowen and other parts of the country. They recognise the fight that people there are having to try to get adequate redress and they are wondering if they will be facing the same down the road. It is not just in that part of Sligo, but in other areas as well because many of these building companies and quarries shared products over and back. When one supplier of blocks was running low, it got a couple of loads from somewhere else. So, somebody bought blocks from one particular supplier not knowing that the product had come from a different quarry perhaps 50, 60 or 100 miles away. This will spread across a large area of the country. It will not be confined to the counties which have got the go-ahead to be in this scheme. The Minister really needs to consider that this will be a much more widespread problem as we move forward. One of the big issues people are coming across is where they are going to go while they are getting this work done. They simply cannot rent a house anywhere else because there are no houses to rent. They cannot find any way out of this problem. Some people have decided that they have to buy a mobile home or get some kind of a demountable dwelling or something put on their back street, if they can. Even that is very difficult because they do not have the money to invest in all of this. They certainly do not have the confidence to be able to go and borrow that money because they do not know if the Government scheme will back them up. That is the problem we have got here. We also have the issue of who will do the work. Where will they get the workers to do this? We are in a real crisis here and one of the few things we would expect people to be able to stand by is that the Government that let them down in the past by allowing these lax regulations that got them into this mess in the first place would now step up to the plate and ensure that there is adequate redress and an adequate scheme, so that they can have the confidence to be able to look to the future. However, very many people cannot look to that future. This is why I implore the Minister to look again at these amendments and not just cut them down. He should not put us in the position where we will be coming back again and again representing our constituents in my area and all the other areas around the country affected by this problem. It affects many other parts of the country as well. It will not be isolated to a few small areas. It may become very widespread in the future because defective building materials were not confined to county boundaries. They did not put up a fence and say, "You can't cross here". They have gone all over the place and there needs to be recognition of that as well. Even at this late stage, it is not too late to step up, accept the amendments and put a scheme in place that would provide for people. That would ensure we have something in place which will save time, give people confidence and actually save money in the long run. That is what the Minister needs to do. I appeal to him at this stage, on behalf of my constituents in Sligo-Leitrim and people across the whole country who are affected by this, to step up to the plate here, recognise that what he is doing is flawed, accept the amendments and move this legislation forward in such a way that we can have confidence and the people who are in this terrible mess can have confidence in their future.

Sentiment score: -0.01