Defective Building Materials
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-18
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Pearse Doherty (SF), Donegal

The banking and insurance focus group is doing tremendous work. In fairness to BPFI, it has really engaged with it and included other organisations such as Insurance Ireland, valuers and so on. The Department of housing has refused to engage with them, which is ridiculous, to tell the truth. They should be part of the working group, as should other Departments. These are very serious people who are working through issues like the mortgageability of houses. Houses remediated through the existing scheme are not mortgageable because the authorities will not sign off on them. The group made up of the parties I have referred to has made a submission on the new standards for defective concrete blocks, raising serious concerns. There are other issues also and they are major.
I welcome what the Minister for Finance said about the Minister for housing, but what is really at the core of this is whether the Minister for Finance actually believes there are people in my constituency and elsewhere who, even with whatever support the State has given, have to find up to €80,000 to build the exact same house that has to be demolished because of defective blocks. If so, how does he feel it is fair?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:29+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-18