I commend Deputy Charles Ward on his diligent and relentless campaigning on behalf of the tens of thousands of people affected by defective blocks. He is one of those people personally affected, along with tens of thousands of others. I commend all of those who work with him in the 100% Redress party, and all of those who have been affected by this issue, on their campaigning and their refusal to take this lying down. I am very glad to support the motion. In a way, I am also very glad that I do not have the expertise Deputy Charles Ward has. I have been trying to get educated by him on the issue. It is not something that has emerged in my constituency, at least so far, but I am aware of the consequences of the willingness by Fianna Fáil in particular, but also Fine Gael, to allow developers and people in the construction industry not to be properly regulated or controlled and for that to have devastating consequences on homeowners and renters, in particular with fire safety issues. Many tens of thousands of people are affected by buildings that were not built properly and have fire safety issues, which imposed costs and hardships on them. Some of that stuff is not over. I recently came across a new social housing development where, within months of moving in, people have damp, mould and so on all over the place and are having to fight to have those things addressed. This stuff is still going on, so there is a lot at stake on these issues. It is shocking that at least 20,000 householders are living in homes that are crumbling around their ears and which are now worthless. They worked hard for those homes and they are worthless. They cannot sell them. The Government seemed to be crowing about its redress scheme, but if I understand this correctly, the reason only slightly more than 3,000 people have applied for it is that the scheme is so inadequate, and the gap between the cost of remediating a home and what the Government is willing to give means that for huge numbers of people affected by this issue the scheme the Government is proposing is completely inadequate and will not allow them to remediate their homes. That means they are stuck in crumbling homes unable to deal with the consequences of something that was basically the responsibility of the Government and its failure to regulate cowboys - profit-driven, unscrupulous people - in the construction industry. On top of that, where people may try to rebuild their homes with an inadequate scheme, the Government is forcing them to build on foundations that may crumble in the future. Where people know that the material that could lead to that crumbling - the defective substances or substance that lead to these defects - are there but we do not know what will happen in the future, rather than giving those people the option to fully replace the foundations, the Government is insisting they build on foundations that could crumble. Why would the Government do that? First, the people have gone through having their homes crumble around them and become worthless and they have to rebuild them. Then they are being made build on foundations that could crumble again in the future, causing them anxiety, concern and all the hardship that would involve, in addition to the cost of doing that. It defies belief that the Government will not take on board what Deputy Ward is saying here, namely, that people should have the option to fully replace those foundations and, more generally, that the Government should be providing 100% redress from end to end to resolve this for all of those who have been affected by this terrible issue of defective concrete. The amendment the Government has put forward is extremely disappointing. It should withdraw it and take on board what Deputy Ward is very reasonably asking for to help the many tens of thousands of people affected by this scandal. There may be a lot more affected.

Sentiment score: -0.21