Remediation of Dwellings Damaged by the Use of Defective Concrete Blocks (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee and Remaining Stages Dail Éireann — 2025-12-10 ============================================================ Pearse Doherty (SF), Donegal I move amendment No. 8: In page 5, between lines 26 and 27, to insert the following: “Report on supportive measures for rental property activation in areas impacted by defective concrete blocks 2. The Minister shall, within 3 months of the passing of this Act, prepare and lay before Dáil Éireann a report on supportive tax measures for rental property activation in areas impacted by defective concrete blocks.”. This is an amendment I tabled to the Finance Bill. I also tabled a detailed amendment which was dealt with during the Finance Bill debate. In fairness to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Harris, who is new to his brief, he said, to paraphrase, there was merit in what was being raised and he would engage constructively with the Department and the Minister for housing, Deputy Browne, in that regard. He made the point, which is a fair one, that it is the Minister for housing or a different Department that comes up with a scheme. The Department of Finance is then asked to examine the merits of the scheme and whether it has a tax implication. It has to originate from another Department, however. The Minister mentioned that this legislation was coming up as a potential way to deal with this. That is why it is raised here. To provide context to this amendment, we talked earlier about the core issues with the flawed scheme that is and will continue to be in existence after this legislation. A number of core issues were dealt with in Sinn Féin amendments, such as 100% redress and an end-to-end scheme, that, unfortunately, the Government parties rejected. This is more of a tangential issue. It is not going to change the world for people; the major problems will still exist. For people going through the scheme, however, there is a major issue of housing. Where will they live during the remediation of their house? Where will they live as the house is being knocked to the ground and rebuilt? While there are a number of ways to deal with that, the one way not to is exactly what the Government is doing, that is, nothing. The Government is basically leaving it up to individuals to try to find mobile homes or demountables, move in with neighbours or family or search for rental properties in a county where they are few and far between. We need a bit of forward planning in this regard. There are a number of parts to the solution, including the accommodation of modular homes. I think Deputy Ward has an amendment later on that and Deputy the Cope Gallagher mentioned that possibility as well. They could be accommodated in certain areas. I am conscious that I speak on behalf of Donegal because it is the people of Donegal who put me here. I am conscious too that individuals in Mayo, in Clare, and elsewhere are also affected. The one thing that those counties have is a lot of vacancies, including a lot of holiday homes. I dealt with a family recently who are in a desperate situation. They cannot find a place to live. They literally cannot find a place to live. They are competing with people who have got notices to quit and they are competing with families who maybe want to move into the area and so on. The housing is not there. Yet we all know in our local communities, if we look around, that there are a lot of vacant houses. There might be a house that was in a family's ownership, the mother or father may have passed away or a brother may have passed away or so on and it was left to an individual. There are a lot of holiday homes as well in Donegal and down the west coast. This amendment is trying to incentivise. It is not for the rental sector because we do not want to interfere with the rental sector. The rental sector is there and we do not want to compete with that sector. We want to try to entice people who own homes that are not permanently occupied to make them available to individuals who are having their homes demolished and rebuilt under the scheme. The template that I came up with is to ensure that the rental income they would receive as a result of that, received only from somebody who is going through the scheme, would be exempt from tax. Is there a precedent for this? Yes. The Government introduced the accommodation recognition payment, ARP, which is only available to Ukrainians. In the county of Donegal there are over 2,000 homes that are rented out to Ukrainians and the rental income is tax free for the owners of those homes. This is in no way about pitching one over the other. It is absolutely not about that. It is about stating this already exists in law. It exists for what is called a humanitarian disaster. I have my own issues in relation to that scheme because it does interfere with the rental market and belatedly the Government has recognised that. The proposal in this amendment would not do that because it would only be for those properties that were not rented, or should be registered with the Residential Tenancies Board, in the last three years. It is very much targeted at vacant homes that have never been rented or holiday homes where somebody might be willing to do this for the year and a half during which families are rebuilding their homes. That is what this amendment is about. This can happen. I understand that the Government will not budge on the other issues. They have just voted down what are sensible amendments but this can happen. This provision already exists in my county and elsewhere in a big way for Ukrainians but it does not exist for people from Donegal or elsewhere whose homes are affected by defective blocks. Will the amendment change the availability of homes overnight? No. But if it deals with one family so that they find a place to live when their home is being rebuilt then so be it. The beautiful thing about this as well is it that is has an endpoint. It is only available through the construction and rebuilding of the home. Hopefully it would also have another benefit, which is to make rental properties cheaper. On rental income, obviously, they are not rental properties at the minute, but the house they would rent out would be cheaper because it would be tax free and that allows for more money to be available to the individual in relation to the rebuilding of their home under the very flawed scheme that we have before us. That is the proposition. The Minister for Finance said there is merit to the issue and wanted to constructively engage with it. I cannot see a reason we do not move on it. It is definitely worth trying. It will not change the world but it could help many families. If we can just do that, it would be a job well done in terms of supporting this amendment. --- 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