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

Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (SF), Donegal

What we have in Donegal in terms of housing is a perfect storm. We have the same issues as everywhere else around the State. There was a period of ten or 11 years where virtually no social housing was built in Donegal. Therefore, the private rental sector took on that role through the rental accommodation scheme and the housing assistance payment. We are now playing catch up. All of those private rental properties were taken up by that failure in that period from 2010 to 2021, which was an 11-year period. I will give an example. There were more social houses delivered in Donegal in one year in 2002 than in the 11 years since 2010 to 2021. That was a disastrous period and a disastrous policy. House prices in the county also have gone through the roof relative to income and the cost of rent has gone through the roof. People who work in good jobs, for example a couple with good employment, cannot get a mortgage from the banks. Rent is going through the roof. Rent has doubled in Donegal in the last five or six years. It has really doubled. It is so difficult to find rental property. It is heartbreaking when somebody is told that their rented house is going to be sold and they have to find somewhere else. They cannot find anywhere else. It is pure desperation. We have all of that and defective blocks too. I cannot stress how important this proposal is from Deputy Doherty. As the Deputy has pointed out clearly that it has been done for another humanitarian crisis, why can it not be done for our humanitarian crisis? It could not be more simple.
We have a perfect storm housing crisis. We desperately need to free up properties to be used for families while their homes are being rebuilt. I urge the Minister of State to accept 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