I broadly welcome that the Remediation of Dwellings Damaged by the Use of Defective Concrete Blocks (Amendment) Bill 2025 is finally before the House. Families have waiting for far too long for even the small improvements contained in these pages. Any step, no matter how modest, that puts a few euro back into the pockets of the struggling homeowners is good. However, let us also call things by their name. The way the Government has handled the passage of this Bill is nothing short of a disgrace. It waived pre-legislative scrutiny, it withheld the text until the very day of the debate and now it intends to ram Committee and Remaining Stages through the Dáil next week before homeowners, engineers, or advocacy groups have even had a chance to read the Bill in full. That is not good governance. It is not transparency. It is certainly not the respect that the people living in crumbling homes deserve. The Government should send this Bill to the proper select committee and do the right thing. Independent Ireland has been very clear. When legislation affects thousands of families whose lives have been devastated financially, emotionally and mentally, the Government should not hide the Bill until the eleventh hour. It should not silence homeowners' input. It should not treat people like an inconvenience. It should bring the Bill to the committee where it belongs. It should allow scrutiny and it lets the public speak. To be fair, I acknowledge something sincerely. There are aspects of this Bill that align with the long-standing position of those campaigning for 100% redress and with the policy of Independent Ireland. There are improvements to timelines and increases, however limited, in grant rates. There is a recognition, slow and partial as it is, that retrospective injustice had to be addressed in some form. These are points that align with the 100% Redress party's agenda, which its TD, Deputy Charles Ward, has strongly articulated in this House, and which we fully support. However, that is where the positivity ends. The Bill, when stripped of its gloss, is still just a set of tweaks to a scheme that has already failed thousands of families. It is not new redress, it is not just justice, it does not implement the people's document and it does not come close to the standards of full, fair, 100% redress. This Bill retains the capped square metre-based grant system, the same flawed mechanism that leaves families facing shortfalls of €100,000 to €200,000, and more. Government continues to parade this capped scheme as a 100% redress scheme, even though every engineer, every campaigner and every affected homeowner knows that it is simply untrue. The cap remains. The square-metre rates remain. The financial risk remains firmly of the shoulders of the innocent homeowner. The Bill also introduces arbitrary retrospective cut-offs and this brings me to some of the most glaring injustices that must be addressed on Committee Stage. First is the exclusion of 43 homeowners who completed rebuilds, or outer-leaf repairs before the Government's retrospective date of 29 March. These families acted in good faith, based on the Government's own message and on commitments from the Minister that early starters would not be penalised. Yet, they are being penalised. They are cut off, excluded, and left behind. The housing committee told the Minister about these 43 homeowners weeks ago but they are still outside the scheme improvements. Where is the fairness in that? What is the moral difference between a family who paid their builder in February and a family who paid in April? There is none, but the Government has invented one. Second, this Bill excludes side-by-side rebuilds in exceptional circumstances, including cases involving disability and complex medical needs. These are families who simply cannot remain in their homes during the rebuilds. The Minister announced in June that these families would be included. Yet, the Bill forgets them entirely. That is another broken promise and another group sacrificed to the Department's obsession with controlling costs rather than protecting people. Third, the Bill openly acknowledges that the NSAI review of I.S. 465 remains incomplete. Homeowners do not know how the revised standards will affect their remediation option or grant amount. This limbo, this scientific uncertainty, is exactly what caused the downgrading crisis that devastated families in Donegal, Mayo and beyond. If the Government is going to legislation based on an incomplete standard, it must provide effective interim guidance to engineers and local authorities until the review is finished. Otherwise, we are repeating the same mistake again. The Government may say that the Bill makes process improvements and provides longer timelines, a longer appeal window and a technical review mechanism. These are welcome but they are welcome in the way a sticking plaster is welcome when the wound is deep and untreated. The core problem remains. This Bill preserves a scheme built on capped grants, narrow eligibility and partial date-bound retrospection, all of which fall far short of what the affected homeowners and others in the Opposition demand. It also remains utterly silent on so many vital areas. It does nothing for social housing. Even council tenants are living in the same crumbling walls as everyone else. It does nothing for schools, community buildings, farms or small businesses built with defective blocks. It does nothing for mental health supports, even though we now have evidence of soaring rates of depression, anxiety and PTSD among affected homeowners. People are at breaking point. Families are broken, children are suffering and the Government's answer is a spreadsheet. This is not a technical issue; it a humanitarian crisis and it demands a humanitarian response. This House has seen cross-party consensus, with all acknowledge the current scheme is failing, yet the Government continues to bring forward legislation that manages the crisis instead of resolving it. By refusing scrutiny, refusing transparency and refusing to listen to the homeowners, the Government only deepens the mistrust. I will finish with this. This Bill moves a few numbers. It rearranges a few procedures. It offers partial fixes to deep injustice but it does not deliver justice. It does not deliver fairness and it certainly does not deliver 100% redress.

Sentiment score: -0.05