I thank Deputy Ward for bringing forward this motion. It is no surprise that I and my colleagues are very happy to support it. It is very important we all work together to tackle this. However, the Government is still not listening; it is not hearing what is being said. That is the great tragedy of all this. Since we started this nearly 12 years ago - or more than that - on the Erris peninsula in Mayo, the Government has not listened. If it had listened, we would now have a 100% redress scheme and many people would have their homes and lives rebuilt. I cannot understand why it is inflicting this cruelty on people through no fault of their own. This was negligence of Government; it was a lack of regulation. Now, we see all kinds of other things where we are told regulations are too strict and we need to deregulate things. My God, there is a human cost to this as well as the monetary and opportunity costs. Yesterday, Dr. Chris Browne and Professor Paul Dunlop - I do not know where we would be without them and their colleagues in Ulster University who have brought forward the science on this, because the Government has not done it - presented the cost as being estimated at €462,000 per property for 20,000 properties, which will be at least €9.2 billion. That is what is coming out of taxpayers' pockets to do this. There has not been any proper attempt to recoup some of that money from anywhere else, as was done in Wales, as Dr. Browne explained to us yesterday, where there was a division of the responsibilities and how the redress funds were set up. It has not been set up like that here but the decisions have to be based on the science. The other very important thing which came up yesterday was foundations. We have said all along that foundations have to be tested. For God's sake, Engineering Ireland has told the Government that. It cannot sign off on properties where the foundations have not been replaced. People cannot afford the gaps that are there. Deputy Doherty spoke about the gaps of €80,000 or whatever, but there are gaps of up to €100,000 that people are asked to find to pay for the Government's negligence on this. The off-ramping situation also has to be looked at in order to be able to speed up the testing.

Sentiment score: 0.05