Remediation of Dwellings Damaged by the Use of Defective Concrete Blocks (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-10
============================================================

Richard O'Donoghue (II), Limerick County

I listened to the Minister speak on the amendments. He referred to the Building Control Acts 1990 to 2025. What the Minister is saying is that for a house built in the 1990s, a section can be put on that house connecting the 1990 blockwork to the 2025 blockwork. Who is going to certify it? I deal with engineers daily. For certification of anything that I need, I would have to get all the different certificates right down to the nails that are used. Everything has to be shown to be job specific.
Given the Minister referred to 1990 to 2025, he is now connecting the basis of what is allowed for houses, whereby some part of the house will be removed and the internal structure will be left as it was. How are they going to be joined? The Minister is joining 1990s standards to 2025 standards. He is not taking out one completely and replacing it but actually connecting to it. How can he regulate around that and give guarantees to homeowners that they can remove the outer part of their house, leave the inner part, support the house, connect new blockwork, which is of 2025 standard, to 1990 standard blockwork, and get somebody to certify it? I do not think it can be done. Is the Government going to give a guarantee that it can be certified? If there is an issue afterwards, will the Government take liability for the mess it is now making?
The Minister talked about building regulations and building standards. They are upgraded every year. Even from the point of view of hospitals being built, if they go to 1 January of the following year, the regulations can change and they would have to start all over again. Yet the Minister is able to say under those amendments that 1990 standards can be certified with 2025 standards. What has been made excessively clear tonight is that the Government will give the guarantee and take responsibility if there is a breakdown afterwards in the two different contexts of materials from the different eras.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:27+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-10