I welcome the visitors to the Gallery. As others have said, I pay tribute to Deputy Ward on the work he has done. Last October, my colleague, Senator Nessa Cosgrove, and I went to Donegal to visit some of the people who are affected by this humanitarian disaster. I thought I knew about defective concrete and that I could quantify in my head the actual scale of the humanitarian disaster but I cannot. I cannot help thinking, every time I think of defective concrete, of putting my hand on someone's house and feeling the wall come away like dust. I cannot help but think of the smell of the black mould in the kitchens we went to visit, the fact that the lights and electricity keep tripping because water is ingressing through everything, and that chimneys fall off people's houses and that is considered to be not that big a deal. I met somebody else who was concerned about their safety and their children's because the walls were crumbling so badly on their house that they are afraid that the roof would come down and crush them. The Government's amendment to the motion is tone-deaf. The amendment states that the scheme relies on IS 465:2018, which does not require testing of foundations. What is the point of pouring a brand new house onto a cracked foundation? It does not make any sense. The motion notes that 500 homes were remediated. Five hundred homes is a fraction. It is minuscule compared with the true level of need. We had a very informative presentation in the audiovisual room by Professor Paul Dunlop, who is an expert in this area. He quantified that at least 12,000 homes could be affected in Donegal at home. We have this in Limerick too. It is not just an issue in Donegal and the north west. We have this in Limerick city. I have had people in my constituency office in tears because they are living in semi-detached homes in Limerick city. As Professor Dunlop pointed out yesterday, defective concrete takes a lot longer to actually show up in areas like Limerick. A woman who came to see me, who is involved in the defective concrete campaign in Limerick, only had the defective concrete show up when she got an SEAI grant and got the walls pumped. When she got the walls pumped, that effectively showed all the cracks. The core issue remains, that the people who are suffering this humanitarian disaster are being treated as second-class citizens in comparison to the people who were equally devastated by pyrite in Fingal and on the eastern seaboard of the country. That is a fact and the core of the issue here. The legislation is too narrow. I cannot believe that people are still talking about mica, when the fact of the matter is that this is not just something that affects defective concrete blocks in houses but affects poured concrete and other building material. The core issue, as always in this country with anything during the Celtic tiger period, is the lack of any accountability because we know that, as well as the quarry owners, the political system was up to its neck in this. We have had a total regulatory failure. We have quarries which have and are manufacturing defective concrete and getting away with it. How has the State responded? It has responded, as it always does to victims of injustice, by forcing blameless citizens to prove that they are not lying, by bureaucratically downgrading their applications at the click of a mouse, and by passing the long-term risk back onto them. The State is effectively telling homeowners to rebuild their lives on top of foundations that we know contain pyrite and other sulphide materials, and it is absolute madness. You are talking about being penny wise but you are really being pound foolish. The standard that the Government is relying on is operating under conditions of material scientific uncertainty. There is no long-term evidence that these foundations will hold up over the next 30, 40 or 50 years. You cannot tell a family to build a home on a questionable foundation and just leave them to hold the legal and financial bag if the foundation fails a decade or more from now. We need an independent review of IS 465:2026, specifically considering how sulphites and pyrrhotite destroy foundations over time. We need to amend the defective concrete block scheme so no individual is ever forced to retain a foundation where engineering uncertainty exists. Homeowners must have an explicit, fully funded right to opt for a complete foundation replacement if there is reasonable doubt. We need to ensure that all residual structural risk remains with the State. If the State standard fails, then the State is going to have to pay because the homeowners cannot. This crisis was caused by a catastrophic failure of government regulation and a total lack of oversight in the quarrying sector, particularly from the Fianna Fáil Government of 1997 onwards. The State completely failed to protect the affected people. It is now time for the Government to stop the ducking and half measures and actually deliver the 100% redress the families fundamentally deserve so that they can have peace of mind. I welcome every opportunity to speak on this issue. I commend Deputy Ward on his motion because what he is seeking to do is ensure the State assumes accountability for the risk of defective foundations in concrete homes. It is imperative that this burden does not fall on homeowners who cannot afford to pay the difference. We have a duty as legislators to listen to and reflect the views of the people we represent. The poor families who have been affected should not be expected or forced to bear the responsibility and cost required to remedy the problem when they have gone out of their way to secure a home for their family and made that purchase in good faith, with an expectation that the home they live in will not fall down on top of them. Homeowners should be able to feel safe in their homes. They should have confidence in the structure of the dwelling they live in. These are relatively basic things. Invariably, when homeowners like these poor people are forced into some sort of rebuild, they have one shot to make it work. They must not be forced to put blood, sweat and tears, and an insane amount of money, into rebuilding their homes only for them to be rebuilt essentially on quicksand. Forcing them to do so is absolutely bananas because once a decision has been made to rebuild, one cannot turn back the clock on it. That is why this is really important. Through detailed scientific research, it is now known that the problems with defective concrete can be traced to an internal sulphite attack. It is clearly apparent that, with the distribution of this defective and highly damaging concrete material, numerous EU and Irish concrete regulations were violated. It is of critical importance that these regulations be enforced to prevent the status quo from continuing. As other speakers said, we do not just have defective concrete in homes. There is defective concrete in secondary schools in Limerick. We need the Government to address this by commissioning an independent international review of the scientific basis of IS 465:2026 because we need a greater understanding of how and why this entered the market in the first place. In my city, Limerick, we reckon 2,500 properties may be affected by concrete defects and deterioration. We need a different approach to this, and that is why I am really disappointed by the Government amendment.

Sentiment score: -0.16