Remediation of Dwellings Damaged by the Use of Defective Concrete Blocks (Amendment) Bill 2025: Second Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-11
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Nessa Cosgrove (LAB), Labour Panel

I thank the Minister for coming into the House today. We have to get this right and we want to get it right. I know that the Minister visited Donegal so I know that he has seen at first hand, as I have, the impact this has had, especially at this time of the year when putting up Christmas lights. There is water pouring down inside people's houses, and I know the Minister knows this. We know it is a man-made catastrophe and it has befallen the communities the length and breadth of the north west. The devastation that has been experienced in those communities will leave a long legacy, and we all know this. Families are spending years paralysed with fear that the roofs are going to fall on their heads and the floors are going to collapse below them. Hard-working parents and communities did everything right to build these homes for their children. They have taken out mortgages. We have seen this right across communities - community centres, schools, crèches - in Donegal, Sligo and all down the west coast. I commend the work of 100% Redress and Deputy Charles Ward on raising this and the fact that he has been elected to the Dáil. It shows how much of a catastrophe it actually is. I also commend the four councillors in Donegal, Councillors Joy Beard, Ali Farren, Tomás Devine and Denis McGee. They are living there and are dealing with people who are living in defective homes. The emotional fallout from that for them is enormous as well and I think that has to be put on the record.
There are some welcome tweaks in this Bill, there is no doubt about it, but it does not tackle the fundamental issue that the scheme we have does not work. It is a scheme that does not deliver the end-to-end redress that these families need and deserve. Putting a sticking plaster on a failing grant scheme is just not good enough, and the need for the Housing Agency to review determinations is simply not good enough either. It only underlines why we need a proper end-to end-scheme. Option one, namely, full demolition and reconstruction, is the only viable option. We all know of cases, and I have seen them myself in Donegal, and it just makes no sense, where one of a pair of semi-detached houses was demolished because it was seen as defective while the other one was left standing. This illustrates the bit-part nature of the scheme. It is welcome that the Government is moving to rectify this, but I note the concerns raised that it does not go far enough. The incremental approach of the Government to this scheme, making a tweak here and a twist here and delaying all the while, is failing the communities. At this time of the year people are trying to heat their homes but the heat is going straight out through cracks in the walls. The families are exhausted. They are campaigning to fight for this and they should not have to. The Government could do the right thing. I know the Minister has been to the north west and he has seen this. He could introduce an end-to-end scheme because we know it works. We saw this on the east coast where there was the pyrite remediation scheme and it did work but this Bill is not allowing this. It is a slow, incremental change and we can see that people are continuing to have to fight. They would not keep fighting if they thought this Bill was okay. All those amendments would not have been tabled in the Dáil last night if it was okay.
The moral imperative to stand by a family who repaired their home on 28 March is just the same as for those who did so on 30 March. The arbitrary nature of that date sums up the Government's attitude to these families. It is an attitude of disinterest and disdain that has been plain to see throughout this whole saga. Unfortunately, this Bill does nothing to reassure me that it is going to change. It is a sticking plaster when it is evident that we need to have a wholesale reset. The Minister has seen communities destroyed, not just in Donegal but also in Sligo, Limerick, Leitrim and Mayo. We need to see a full end-to-end scheme, not based on grants, because we know that the State can do it - we have done it before - but based on actually delivering the reconstruction of work the families have done across the way, which they are crying out for.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:27+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-11