The amendments we are dealing with in this legislation - the amendments tabled by the Sinn Féin Deputies - go to the very core of the issue. If accepted by the Minister, they would probably satisfy the vast majority of people in my constituency regarding the challenges they have. Of course, there are other issues, including those related to the administration of the scheme and the criteria, but a core issue is the 100% redress, as we lay out in amendment No. 5 and as campaigned for in my constituency and elsewhere for many years. Despite the campaign, the Government fails to acknowledge the reality that people will be left behind until redress of 100% is provided. In amendment No. 7, we have put forward an amendment dealing with the fact that what is required is an end-to-end remediation scheme for all those impacted by defective concrete blocks and related building materials. That is also fair because asking individuals who never thought they would be project-managing the rebuilding of their homes to take on that responsibility, whether they are young or old, single or married, is absolutely appalling. It was not requested in other areas where there were defects and it should not be asked of people in my constituency or others right across the State as the number of victims of this scandal increases. Amendment No. 7 also deals with issues such as retrospective payments, an issue that has seen so many people, including early movers, insulted. Also, there are the issues of the damage threshold, semi-detached properties and side-by-side remediation. I have heard my colleagues speak about the real impact of this legislation and of what our amendments would do for the lives of people across the State. What is going to be the end point of this legislation that the Minister is putting through tonight? If he is being true to himself and knows anything about how this matter is playing out on the ground, he will know there are people who will not be able to rebuild their homes. Therefore, in five years or ten years, this issue will not have gone away. The affected homes are going to deteriorate and crumble, and their owners are going to be prisoners within them because the Government has a scheme that does not allow them to rebuild. Under the scheme, people are forced to find tens of thousands of euro. I spoke to one individual who described the absolute nightmare he went through for a number of years. I asked him what he thought it would cost his own pocket. He said he did not even want to think about it, but it was probably in the range of €80,000 to €100,000. That is money people do not have. I spoke to a fellow here last night who was not even at the stage of tenders and so on. They are accepted for demolition. They are not even thinking about where the money would come from. This scheme fails people of all types. It fails people because the Government is demanding of them that they put their hands in their pockets, go into debt and find tens of thousands of euro, whether they are borrowing it for families, digging into nest eggs or whatever it is, for something that they had no hand, act or part in. The fact is that their homes were built with deleterious materials. Indeed, it is the State that is responsible, that should be regulating these products and that is culpable, and that is why 100% redress should be provided. The Minister might try to fool himself. Those in the Government parties who will vote for this Bill might try to fool themselves. I agree with Deputy Conway-Walsh that there are TDs who are genuine because they know neighbours and, in some cases, family members who are involved, but they know that this legislation is locking them into a nightmare, not for next year or the year after, but for tens of years. There are elderly people who have no income outside of the State pension. Where will they get the €50,000, €60,000 or sometimes €90,000 to rebuild their house? This is not going away. We will be back here and the only thing that will change is that these homes will be more expensive to rebuild in the future because the Government is refusing to deal with the reality here and now. This crisis is only getting bigger. I see it in my county. Deputy Mac Lochlainn comes from the epicentre of the crisis in Donegal, the Inishowen Peninsula. You would find it tough to walk the length of yourself and not know somebody who was living in a home that was crumbling, who was a victim of the defective block scandal. That has spread in the east of the county and elsewhere in the west of the county. Every single day, we hear of more and more cases in the west, whether in Gweedore, Glenties or Kilcar. It goes right through. I have seen what Charlie McConalogue put out and it is insulting, because people who are living this nightmare know the reality. If the Minister thinks this is going away, it is not. I genuinely believe that the Government needs to just bite the bullet on this issue. It would be perverse were it the case, but is it the plan to force people to find the €100,000 to rebuild their homes and then have to deal with the ones who never had that money in the first instance, could not borrow or could not get a loan or another mortgage, and then provide something for them in five, seven, eight, nine or ten years? The Minister needs to get real about this and do the right thing. These amendments are sensible. It is what the campaign and individuals are looking for. It is what Sinn Féin would deliver if we were in government. It is the right thing and the fair thing to do. When people come to me, whether it is somebody looking at a medical issue or a social welfare, or somebody who is living in a home that is crumbling around them, I try to step into their shoes. I try to think of them like my mum, sister or somebody I know personally. On this issue, I find it impossible to step into their shoes because I have been in their homes and I cannot imagine the nightmare that they are going through. What the Government is doing is cruel beyond words. The Minister should accept the Sinn Féin amendments. They make sense. They have the backing of the community and of the campaigns. Whether the Minister likes it or not, legislation will be introduced in this House at some stage with 100% redress, because that is the only way we will deal with this issue once and for all.

Sentiment score: -0.12

I move amendment No. 8: In page 5, between lines 26 and 27, to insert the following: “Report on supportive measures for rental property activation in areas impacted by defective concrete blocks 2.The Minister shall, within 3 months of the passing of this Act, prepare and lay before Dáil Éireann a report on supportive tax measures for rental property activation in areas impacted by defective concrete blocks.”. This is an amendment I tabled to the Finance Bill. I also tabled a detailed amendment which was dealt with during the Finance Bill debate. In fairness to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Harris, who is new to his brief, he said, to paraphrase, there was merit in what was being raised and he would engage constructively with the Department and the Minister for housing, Deputy Browne, in that regard. He made the point, which is a fair one, that it is the Minister for housing or a different Department that comes up with a scheme. The Department of Finance is then asked to examine the merits of the scheme and whether it has a tax implication. It has to originate from another Department, however. The Minister mentioned that this legislation was coming up as a potential way to deal with this. That is why it is raised here. To provide context to this amendment, we talked earlier about the core issues with the flawed scheme that is and will continue to be in existence after this legislation. A number of core issues were dealt with in Sinn Féin amendments, such as 100% redress and an end-to-end scheme, that, unfortunately, the Government parties rejected. This is more of a tangential issue. It is not going to change the world for people; the major problems will still exist. For people going through the scheme, however, there is a major issue of housing. Where will they live during the remediation of their house? Where will they live as the house is being knocked to the ground and rebuilt? While there are a number of ways to deal with that, the one way not to is exactly what the Government is doing, that is, nothing. The Government is basically leaving it up to individuals to try to find mobile homes or demountables, move in with neighbours or family or search for rental properties in a county where they are few and far between. We need a bit of forward planning in this regard. There are a number of parts to the solution, including the accommodation of modular homes. I think Deputy Ward has an amendment later on that and Deputy the Cope Gallagher mentioned that possibility as well. They could be accommodated in certain areas. I am conscious that I speak on behalf of Donegal because it is the people of Donegal who put me here. I am conscious too that individuals in Mayo, in Clare, and elsewhere are also affected. The one thing that those counties have is a lot of vacancies, including a lot of holiday homes. I dealt with a family recently who are in a desperate situation. They cannot find a place to live. They literally cannot find a place to live. They are competing with people who have got notices to quit and they are competing with families who maybe want to move into the area and so on. The housing is not there. Yet we all know in our local communities, if we look around, that there are a lot of vacant houses. There might be a house that was in a family's ownership, the mother or father may have passed away or a brother may have passed away or so on and it was left to an individual. There are a lot of holiday homes as well in Donegal and down the west coast. This amendment is trying to incentivise. It is not for the rental sector because we do not want to interfere with the rental sector. The rental sector is there and we do not want to compete with that sector. We want to try to entice people who own homes that are not permanently occupied to make them available to individuals who are having their homes demolished and rebuilt under the scheme. The template that I came up with is to ensure that the rental income they would receive as a result of that, received only from somebody who is going through the scheme, would be exempt from tax. Is there a precedent for this? Yes. The Government introduced the accommodation recognition payment, ARP, which is only available to Ukrainians. In the county of Donegal there are over 2,000 homes that are rented out to Ukrainians and the rental income is tax free for the owners of those homes. This is in no way about pitching one over the other. It is absolutely not about that. It is about stating this already exists in law. It exists for what is called a humanitarian disaster. I have my own issues in relation to that scheme because it does interfere with the rental market and belatedly the Government has recognised that. The proposal in this amendment would not do that because it would only be for those properties that were not rented, or should be registered with the Residential Tenancies Board, in the last three years. It is very much targeted at vacant homes that have never been rented or holiday homes where somebody might be willing to do this for the year and a half during which families are rebuilding their homes. That is what this amendment is about. This can happen. I understand that the Government will not budge on the other issues. They have just voted down what are sensible amendments but this can happen. This provision already exists in my county and elsewhere in a big way for Ukrainians but it does not exist for people from Donegal or elsewhere whose homes are affected by defective blocks. Will the amendment change the availability of homes overnight? No. But if it deals with one family so that they find a place to live when their home is being rebuilt then so be it. The beautiful thing about this as well is it that is has an endpoint. It is only available through the construction and rebuilding of the home. Hopefully it would also have another benefit, which is to make rental properties cheaper. On rental income, obviously, they are not rental properties at the minute, but the house they would rent out would be cheaper because it would be tax free and that allows for more money to be available to the individual in relation to the rebuilding of their home under the very flawed scheme that we have before us. That is the proposition. The Minister for Finance said there is merit to the issue and wanted to constructively engage with it. I cannot see a reason we do not move on it. It is definitely worth trying. It will not change the world but it could help many families. If we can just do that, it would be a job well done in terms of supporting this amendment.

Sentiment score: 0.08

This is infuriating. The Finance Bill went through in the past ten days. I put this to the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance, and, in fairness, he said that what I was saying had merit. The ARP scheme for Ukrainians that I mentioned was designed and is administered by the Department of justice. The latter went to the Department of Finance looking for the income that is paid for those properties to be tax exempt. The Department of Finance accepted that and legislated for it. However, the scheme starts with the Department of Justice. The Tánaiste made the point that this is a Department of housing issue. He also made the point that this legislation could accommodate it. He further made the point that he would engage constructively with the Minister for housing. The official response now is to go back to the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance. In the meantime, people in my constituency cannot find anywhere to live when they get to the end of the process where they are at the point where their houses are to be demolished. The Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, will understand that if any of those poor creatures are watching in, they will be tearing their hair out. What we are proposing makes sense. If you look at Donegal, not everybody is going to make their home available for a start. This is about trying to help. There are nearly 10,000 vacant homes in Donegal according to the census that was taken just three years ago. That number may have gone down because of the ARP scheme. There are more than 12,000 holiday homes in Donegal. There is a huge level of homes in the county that are not permanently occupied and we have a crisis that nobody has a plan for in the context of where the thousands of people involved are going to go when their houses are demolished. If I was talking to my 15-year-old son, he would say "Dad, I think the solution here is try to look at the vacant houses and how we can try to get them into the system for this short period of time." I have spoken to many people who have vacant homes. As I said, in some cases this may be because somebody has passed away. In other instances, they are holidays homes. As political representatives, we literally have to go to people and ask if their brother's or mother's house could be used or it a holiday home that is only occupied once or twice a year could be used. The people involved may not want to rent out those properties; they may never want to be landlords. However, people who own holiday homes in Donegal know there is a humanitarian crisis there. Many of the people have come to know over the years are in the situation we are discussing. What we are proposing is about trying to provide it a little incentive, a little nudge to help move this forward. The State is paying for this accommodation. It makes sense that it is tax free. I am not only disappointed, I am also frustrated with the official answer that has been offered here. The amendment suggests a deadline. The Minister of State is, I presume, reading from an official script from the Department, which obviously does not have a clue what the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance said previously. I can only assume that he never followed through on what he was stated when this was being dealt with in the context of the Finance Bill. I am really disappointed with the response.

Sentiment score: 0.07

I can read the Minister of State what the Tánaiste said when we discussed this issue previously. He stated: I am genuinely grappling constructively with the point the Deputy made on the idea of the ARP. It is not an unfair point. That scheme is administered by the Department of justice. My Department carries out the tax treatment element of the scheme. It is open to other Departments to consider schemes in relation to this area. I will engage constructively with those line Departments in relation to that. There is going to be a review of the scheme and there will be legislation next week. I will engage constructively with the Minister, Deputy Browne, in this regard. If a Department brings forward a scheme, my Department engages with regard to the tax treatment of that scheme. This is two arms of Government that are not talking to each other. People in my constituency have been abandoned as a result. This amendment requests the compilation of a report. I put forward a substantive amendment in the Finance Bill. I also put such an amendment forward here but it was ruled out of order. I am not looking for a vote on this issue; I am looking for a response that says "On this issue, that actually makes sense. We will deal with that on Report Stage of the Bill. The Department will liaise with the Department of Finance and we will bring forward a scheme." That is what I was hoping for. That is what constructive engagement is. Telling me to go back to the fellow who told me to go back to the Department of housing is not on.

Sentiment score: 0.11