The Minister of State accepted this is all taking far too long. He accepted that there are huge issues in relation to social housing, appeals and the standards review. We are where we are and we all accept that, as the people who are dealing with crumbling houses have to accept it. Nobody likes legislation that is dropped at the last minute without any possibility of proper scrutiny but, the fact is, if the Minister of State is talking about the next three weeks, the Government really has to be open to listening to the amendments that are being proposed to deal with the issues he spoke of himself and actually ensuring we deliver. A huge number of people and houses have been impacted in Donegal, Mayo, Clare, Limerick and Sligo. Deputy Louise O'Reilly spoke about the fact that she has constituents who need to be brought into this. Deputy Darren O'Rourke also spoke about that and I am going to add that I am aware of at least four cases in Louth. Louth County Council has been engaging with the Department and the Housing Agency. I think it believed at one stage there was an alternative methodology in dealing with such a low number but at this stage, the application is going in with regard to Louth being taken into this defective concrete blocks scheme. We would like that the scheme to provide what it should have in the beginning, which is 100% redress. We would like that there would not still be the issue in relation to caps and arbitrary dates, where if people have not paid the money between particular dates, they would not be covered. Even having regard to the slight improvements in the legislation, none of this is good enough. The Minister of State could have listened to Deputies Rose Conway-Walsh, Pearse Doherty, Pádraig Mac Lochlainn, Charles Ward or anyone. He could listen to his own constituents because I have no doubt, given the part of the world he is from, he has been inundated with people who have been dealing with their houses falling down for years. The Minister of State is right that all of this has taken far too long so it is absolutely vital that the work is done over the next couple of weeks. We should have been at this point earlier and we should, even at this point, have had a greater level of engagement with all the necessary stakeholders. We should not be looking at these problems still needing to be fixed but they do still need to be fixed. Can we make a serious attempt to get this done so we stop failing the people of the counties that have been spoken about? Can we also ensure the likes of my constituents in Louth are facilitated, and that people are not looking at cracks that become even bigger cracks and houses that are not in any way safe and secure? In fairness, I was very taken with what Deputy Charles Ward had said about doing something very nice for his kid by putting up the Christas lights and then all of a sudden, dealing with the reality of the defective block crisis, tragedy and disaster. In fairness, like Deputy O'Reilly said, it was brought on by this Government's lack of regulatory systems going back over multiple years and now the lack of speed, efficiency and a scheme that will actually deliver. We really and truly need to deal with the issues the Minister of State, Deputy McConalogue, laid out himself and we have to look after these people because they have been dealing with failure after failure. Whether it is Donegal, Mayo, Sligo, those in Deputy O'Reilly's constituency, my constituency or Deputy O'Rourke's constituency, we need to look after them with 100% redress and a scheme that works, and not leave people out of pocket. Most people do not have the €50,000 or €60,000 that is needed because this scheme is not, at this point in time, fit for purpose.

Sentiment score: 0.11