Remediation of Dwellings Damaged by the Use of Defective Concrete Blocks (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee and Remaining Stages Dail Éireann — 2025-12-10 ============================================================ Charles Ward (RDR), Donegal Semi-detached homes are most commonly built sharing the same chimney breast. Unfortunately, I have had to go in with a teleporter to a house that was demolished, seal up the house and basically brick up the house where there was no chimney any more because it had to be taken down. We also had to put in a flue liner for a family friend all before 3 p.m. when the kids got home. The night before, they had to stay in their granny's because the house got tumbled and their room was left exposed. Then, the rodents - the mice - all came in. This is a constant. They are abandoned because they do not have the financial resources. It is being done in the worst way because the majority of semi-detached houses have a shared chimney breast. When you take one away, you expose the house to all the elements and people cannot afford it. I hope the Minister of State will come up to Donegal. All he will see is houses split in half and tarpaulins bolted in with timbers and in behind that are children. They are going to school every day with rodents in the house because they can get in. --- 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