Remediation of Dwellings Damaged by the Use of Defective Concrete Blocks Act 2022 (Designation of Fingal and Wexford County Councils) (Parts of Administrative Areas) Order 2026: Motion
Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-28
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Joe Conway (IND), Cultural and Educational Panel

The expression we sometimes use in politics "pushing at an open door" comes into play here. It is pushing at an open door as we have the legislation and we have the wherewithal. It is now just a matter of exercising our will and giving our say-so to extending this to the two local authority areas of Fingal and Wexford, the Minister's own county.
This is just a matter of simple equity. Under the legislation, the people in the north west, Clare and Limerick deserve and of right can take recourse to the legislation so it obviously is a no-brainer, as they say nowadays, that the other two local authorities be included since the Housing Agency has designated the condition to be a real and not a putative or imaginary one. The Seanad Independent Group is fully behind this motion.
I welcome the motion. We are very much indebted to the county and city councillors around the country who were not only in the vanguard in alerting us to this problem way back but who have also, with great assiduity and doggedness, brought it to the forefront of the political agenda and succeeded in getting legislation that meaningfully dealt with the problem. Local authority members are still watchful. There will be several instances of local authority members who, no doubt, will bring further evidence of the matter to be examined by the Housing Agency. If proof were ever needed, it would be evident in the efficacy of the local authority members, how close they are to their constituents and how they empathise with the difficulty Senator Clifford-Lee mentioned, allowing the people to get on with their lives after the trauma of having had their homes, their castles, whipped from under their feet. We applaud the Government in taking these measures in the two local authority areas, but we also want to underscore the efforts of local authority members who worked with the Minister with great tenacity and vision to bring about this legislation and, hopefully, see it extended in this House this evening.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-04-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:52+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-28