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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Pearse Doherty (SF), Donegal

This is infuriating. The Finance Bill went through in the past ten days. I put this to the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance, and, in fairness, he said that what I was saying had merit. The ARP scheme for Ukrainians that I mentioned was designed and is administered by the Department of justice. The latter went to the Department of Finance looking for the income that is paid for those properties to be tax exempt. The Department of Finance accepted that and legislated for it. However, the scheme starts with the Department of Justice. The Tánaiste made the point that this is a Department of housing issue. He also made the point that this legislation could accommodate it. He further made the point that he would engage constructively with the Minister for housing. The official response now is to go back to the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance. In the meantime, people in my constituency cannot find anywhere to live when they get to the end of the process where they are at the point where their houses are to be demolished. The Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, will understand that if any of those poor creatures are watching in, they will be tearing their hair out.
What we are proposing makes sense. If you look at Donegal, not everybody is going to make their home available for a start. This is about trying to help. There are nearly 10,000 vacant homes in Donegal according to the census that was taken just three years ago. That number may have gone down because of the ARP scheme. There are more than 12,000 holiday homes in Donegal. There is a huge level of homes in the county that are not permanently occupied and we have a crisis that nobody has a plan for in the context of where the thousands of people involved are going to go when their houses are demolished. If I was talking to my 15-year-old son, he would say "Dad, I think the solution here is try to look at the vacant houses and how we can try to get them into the system for this short period of time."
I have spoken to many people who have vacant homes. As I said, in some cases this may be because somebody has passed away. In other instances, they are holidays homes. As political representatives, we literally have to go to people and ask if their brother's or mother's house could be used or it a holiday home that is only occupied once or twice a year could be used. The people involved may not want to rent out those properties; they may never want to be landlords. However, people who own holiday homes in Donegal know there is a humanitarian crisis there. Many of the people have come to know over the years are in the situation we are discussing.
What we are proposing is about trying to provide it a little incentive, a little nudge to help move this forward. The State is paying for this accommodation. It makes sense that it is tax free. I am not only disappointed, I am also frustrated with the official answer that has been offered here. The amendment suggests a deadline. The Minister of State is, I presume, reading from an official script from the Department, which obviously does not have a clue what the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance said previously. I can only assume that he never followed through on what he was stated when this was being dealt with in the context of the Finance Bill. I am really disappointed with the response.

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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