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 This is one of the amendments that was announced after we finally got our hands on the legislation. There was the heads of Bill as presented to the committee on housing and then there were these amendments that were added on. Here is the problem. We have a scheme that tells people they should knock down half of a semi-detached block. We have a scheme that tells you that you should pick out a terraced house out of a row but I will particularly focus on semi-detached units. It really is a minefield for builders. They are very reluctant to do these types of jobs and the prices reflect that. The SCSI costings for a typical semi-detached three or four-bedroom property that was reported back in March 2024, now approaching two years ago, would be a very different price now. Builders can just name what they want. They do not need the work and they do not really want to be doing that work. They have to physically knock down the house very carefully so as not to impact the adjoining house. In some cases, the owners of the adjoining properties are appealing to An Bord Pleanála to try to stop the work. This is a real mess. What is the Minister of State's response to that? It is incremental and minimalist; basically talking about the damage threshold. The fact is there is a whole layer of houses. This goes to the fundamental problems with the scheme. There could be somebody who is a holiday home owner and who is not eligible to take part in the scheme. There could be somebody who has more than one rental property, so this could be property number two, three or four. That is not eligible for the scheme. As these properties are not eligible for the scheme, the Government is forcing one half of the semi-detached block to be knocked down and the other half cannot be because it is not eligible for the scheme. Then, there is the issue of people who just cannot afford to go onto the scheme. They cannot access the money. Because the scheme is not working, we see, in housing estates, half a block being replaced and half staying up. It is just a mess. Rather than just accept this issue of semi-detached dwellings points to the fundamental problems with the conception of the scheme and the injustice of the scheme, what does the Minister of State come up with? A damage threshold, which is the most absolutely minimalist thing that can be done. It will make very little impact. In all of this legislation and amendments that have been presented , this amendment tells me the Government is completely and utterly out of touch with the reality on the ground in our counties. It actually is astonishing that what it came up with as a response to dealing with the mess of knocking down half of these blocks - and we see it all over our constituency - is that if there is one house that is less damaged than the other, we will let both of them go through. That is not the issue. The issue is that there is a whole clatter of houses. As most houses cannot engage with this scheme, they cannot be knocked down because either they are not eligible or the owners cannot afford it so we end up with this. This is just a deeply frustrating amendment and it points to the fact the Minister of State is just not listening. I appreciated Deputy Pat the Cope Gallagher's statement tonight. He is clear this scheme is not working. There are other Government representatives in Donegal who are clear but the problem is that the representatives the Minister of State is listening to are badly advising him. I say again that the Minister of State can ram through this legislation. By the way, it looks like he will reject the amendment. I do not see any evidence that he will accept any amendments. Mark my words: he will be back again in a year and he will be back again in another year. I will talk to both the Minister and the Minister of State when we are older men and they will say I was right that this will come back to haunt them in five years. Maybe their time in politics will be over then but it will come back to haunt those who replace them in time to come. Hopefully, in due course, we will have a government that wakes up and realises 100% redress, delivered directly by the State the same way as the pyrite remediation scheme, is the only way you will take every victim home and give them justice. Frankly, this amendment tells me everything I need to know about how short-sighted they are. --- 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