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

I will give a flavour of the facts on the ground. On option 1, Donegal County Council states - I just got this in - that 121 houses have been built since the scheme came in. In total, 229, 92 combinations and eight option twos. When you outlook option 1, that is 121. Anything else is a remediation option that will be coming back to visit at expense to the Exchequer. That is failure.
For us to service, let us say, 10,000 houses in Donegal when we know there is a case for 25,000, if we are doing it properly, we need to be doing 700 houses for the next 15 years. Our numbers in Donegal last year were 382 homes built throughout the whole county. That means for us to do the defective concrete homes will take over 200 years. We do not have the people to rebuild the homes.
We are doing it at the dearest rate possible. It is €4.35 a block. If you are a blocklayer, you will be looking at €4.35 a block and think that is great, but they are not going to come up to Donegal because they can get that money in Dublin. They cannot get it in other parts of the country but they are looking, because other parts of the country are affected too.
We have out-of-control building costs. At the current rate of progress, it will take 200 years to redo the houses in Donegal. We have not only to do that; we have other issues too. The fact of the matter is the population is growing in Donegal and we cannot build enough houses. We cannot live in a commencement; we can live in completions and completions are what we need.
There are 300 houses going forward, but it is still not going to hit the targets. We are still not going to hit 1,000 houses a year to get us out of here in 15 years. Could you imagine being in this in 15 years' time? I know we are going to be here in 15 years' time. We are going to be talking about this in 15 years' time and it is not going to be €4 a block; it is going to be €8 a block.
We have the opportunity, if we go end-to-end, to have the power of bulk-buying. I have been saying this for years. Bulk-buying is the only way. A builder goes in and gets ten trusses for roofs but a company can go in and get 10,000. The price differential is massive. That is the only way we can do it, save the State money and start building houses on the scale we need in Donegal.

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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