I have huge sympathy for the people affected by this in Donegal, Mayo, Clare, Limerick and other areas because I live in an area where we had the blight of pyrite. So many housing estates in our area were affected because the quarry was situated there. It did not regulate itself and there was a lack of Government regulation. Thousands of people were impacted by this and I campaigned on it and held public meetings on it over the years. This is slightly different but the principle is the same, namely, developers have been allowed to do whatever they want. Any time there are building defects they are not made to pay and it is often the State that pays. That is a political decision by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the other parties that have been in power with them. This is quite a technical motion but the basics of it are that people are in a situation where they do not know whether what the Government is providing is going to work and whether it will be enough. They cannot be the people who are left paying for this because of a lack of government regulation of developers. We know the history of the Minister of State’s party in particular, including the Galway tent and all that. The lack of regulation stems from that. Since the last motion was put on this issue I understand the number of homes affected by the defective blocks could rise to 20,000. That is up from the 9,500 mentioned at the housing committee last year. Only 435 houses built with defective concrete blocks, or 13% of the homes, have had remediation works and the State-funded scheme to address the situation has not been sufficient. At the time of the last motion the standards that were used to determine remediation under the scheme were being revised and reviewed. People are essentially being asked to make a decision on retaining or changing a foundation based on uncertain grounds and a complete absence of long-term knowledge. This motion is asking for a full independent review of the standard and in particular wants the remediation scheme to acknowledge this uncertainty. The State has a responsibility to these homeowners. It cannot be a one-and-done situation. The State must provide long-term supports for those affected and it requires a long-term commitment from this Government. I will mention the experience of people of with pyrite in their houses in many counties. The Minister might clarify something about the Pyrite Remediation Board. It was going to finish this November. That cannot happen. As recently as yesterday I was in a home in my local area. The woman who lives there is a teacher and has owned it for 20 years. She bought an affordable home and it is still cracking. There are cracks appearing in the walls and ceilings and there are holes. There is movement of the home. The assessment she had done – this is a real problem – indicated the house had pyrite level 1, which is not enough to be fixed under the remediation scheme, whereby a house must have at least pyrite level 2. There are thousands of people in this situation where there are homes that are not going to be fixed by the scheme. What are they meant to do? Obviously they cannot sell the homes. The engineer who did the assessment also said there were huge levels of shoddy workmanship and shoddy building practices. The company that did those homes has moved on, with a new name I believe, as they do. It is building away and profiteering from the housing shortage. I do not know the figure but I know people in my local area who have been - diagnosed is not the right word - assessed as having pyrite level 1. They have not been able to avail of the scheme. Somebody has to fix their houses. It is the fault of the developer and the State for not having the building regulations in place that pertain in most advanced capitalist countries. They are just not in place in Ireland. According to the reply to a parliamentary question that I asked, the pyrite remediation scheme has fixed 2,932 homes. That was due to campaigns by residents. It was not the Government waking up one morning and saying, “We should do the right thing.” It was a campaign of public meetings in my own area, petitions, meetings with the council and meetings with politicians. That was the case in other areas as well. There were protests outside the Dáil before I was ever a TD. It was the residents who had to campaign. In fairness, the pyrite remediation scheme worked very well for the residents I spoke to, who were at level 2 and were able to get their whole home fixed and accommodation sorted out. Kudos for that, but it is leaving out people whose homes were said not to be sufficiently damaged. However, those homes are still heaving and there is still movement. It should not cost as much as it would to fix a house from scratch, or anything like that, but they need to be fixed. I also want to raise the other building regulation issues that have arisen. I have been contacted by people in apartments in Ashtown who have had a levy put on their management fees in order to pay to fix fire safety defects. The residents, who probably paid hand over fist for the apartments, are being levied to pay to fix fire defects. They have applied to the Housing Agency under the statutory remediation scheme, but they had to go to TDs to ask if we can also push to see if they can get any reimbursement. What is the story? It is bad enough that they have to raise the money to get it fixed and that they are having difficulty getting reimbursed. I am sure there are several schemes that the housing Department is involved in, but the fact there are schemes like that shows that there also has to be some scheme for the possibly hundreds of homes that did not have sufficient pyrite for it to be fixed fully under the remediation scheme. I want to send my solidarity to all of those affected by the defective concrete blocks issue. I have seen first-hand the impact it has on people's health. Where there is damp and dust, anyone with an asthmatic or respiratory condition could testify that it has made it much worse, but there is also the issue of dealing with a crumbling home. The home is the one safety and security people have in their lives. To see this constantly happening to the adults, children and teenagers affected is unbelievable. When are we going to hold building companies to account in this country? Light-touch regulation or no regulation at all is what happened here. It led to these situations where quarries were not regulated and, therefore, mica, pyrite and all of these issues have developed. To allow builders to build and move off, and to then have the residents themselves pay for safety issues in apartments, is completely out of order. It is beyond time that this was dealt with. I fully support the motion.

Sentiment score: -0.03