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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Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (SF), Donegal

I want to deal with the fact that over a year ago we learned that the then Minister, Deputy O'Brien, was going to move on the report from the SCSI and increase the cap by 10%. Immediately, there was an issue that the early movers, namely that those who were already going through the scheme, were going to be left behind. It was made clear that this would apply retrospectively.
However, it would require amendments to the legislation. I have to observe, following the exchange between Deputy Doherty and the Minister of State, that we clearly have a Department of housing that is allowed to do what it wants with no political direction. I will never understand how it took over a year to bring this legislation here. In our party we would have been able to draft that legislation within hours. This is not complex legislation. It is applying an increased cap retrospectively to those going through the scheme. There is no political leadership in the Department of housing and the officials will just do what they want. They are not accountable. They write the script for the Minister and they write the replies to parliamentary questions. I could show the Minister of State one reply and then show him another.
I will give him an example to do with IS 465 and the application of it by the Housing Agency. The agency was overruling the recommendation of engineers who were on the Engineers Ireland list. These qualified engineers acting on behalf of the families recommended demolition and were overruled by the Housing Agency. When this was questioned, the agency said it was applying IS 465. We all said the emerging evidence was that standard had no credibility and that it was a bad decision the agency was making. I tabled a parliamentary question to the Minister and the officials said they were applying IS 465 in proper order. They were looking at mica. Then a few months later the NSAI finally acknowledged the emerging scientific evidence was very serious and a review had to be done of IS 465. The basis for all this remediation was a hill of beans. All of a sudden the Department officials drafted a new response that said in small print the Minister always told the Housing Agency to look at pyrrhotite. They threw the agency under the bus. There is no political leadership in the Department of housing. The officials will just do what they want. They are not accountable. They will tell you one month the Housing Agency is following IS 465 and mica is the cancer that you have and therefore your house does not have to be demolished. Then a few months later they will say they were wrong about that, but in the small print it is pyrrhotite. They threw the Housing Agency under the bus. I watched that happening.
It is time for the Minister for housing and the Ministers of State to listen to us on the ground in our constituencies and give political direction to the officials in the Department. If the Minister and the Ministers of State do not do that the officials will never make any changes. Why would they? The senior departmental officials are not motivated to make any changes. They are not accountable. They will never have to get elected in any of these constituencies. They will never have to face the people of Donegal, Mayo, Sligo, Clare, Limerick and a growing number of other counties, but the Minister and the Ministers of State will. I had to intervene, having watched that exchange, and tell the Minister of State my experience. I hope he will reflect on that, start to show clear political direction, do what is right and not have the officials write scripts that make a mockery of this place.

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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