Departmental Schemes Dail Éireann — 2026-09-22 ============================================================ Barry Ward (FG), Dún Laoghaire I thank the Minister of State for coming in to deal with this issue. He will be aware that his Department put in place a number of years ago an interim remediation scheme for apartment buildings built during a certain period to deal particularly with fire safety issues. This is right and it is important to put it in place. Most importantly it deals with fire issues. There is an urgency that comes with that, which there might not be with poor upkeep or other structural issues. The idea behind the scheme is that residents have some certainty that they can live in a place that is safe, but we know there are several apartment blocks around the country that suffer from problems with the way the fire systems were constructed when they were built and that have to be repaired to ensure the safety of residents. The scheme is good and I welcome it. The issue I specifically want to address with the Minister of State is that of The Crofton apartments in Dún Laoghaire. It was once an office block and was built as office accommodation but the McGrath Group transformed it into apartments a number of years ago. There are 25 apartments there, duplex and single storey. It is a very nice building, the people who live in it are very nice and they bought their apartments in good faith. Most importantly, when they bought their apartments they were treated as new buys. They paid all the tax and VAT associated with new builds and new apartments. They were recorded as new dwellings on the property price register, even though the building was a converted office block. Therefore, assuming they are newbuilds, which is how they have been treated, they should qualify for the interim remediation scheme. So the Minister of State's Department thought as well because in 2024, when the owners applied for funding under the interim scheme to change the situation they had with their fire systems, they were granted access to the scheme, yet within two years the Department had written back changing its mind, saying, "Actually, no, we are cancelling it". It appears the reason for that is that it was not a newly constructed building, even though the Government took its tax take and took its money from the owners but then, on a different day, told them they were not part of the scheme because the building is not a newbuild, or at least so it appears. The reality is that in this case, the Government is trying to have its cake and eat it. On the one hand, it takes the tax from them as newbuilds and describes them as newbuilds; on the other hand, when it comes to actually being part of a scheme the Government has rightly put in place to protect exactly this type of building and exactly this type of resident, it tells them they do not qualify. It has to be one or the other. Either the Government gives back the VAT and the tax that these residents paid when they bought their apartments or it admits them into the scheme. It cannot be both. The reality is that the Minister of State's Department initially said they could be in the scheme. It gave them the succour, the confidence and the reassurance that they would be part of the scheme and could access it but now they find they are being excluded from it. It does not make sense. Either they are a newbuild or they are not. If they are not, the Government should give the owners back their money because they paid an awful lot in VAT and tax when they bought their newbuild apartments a number of years ago. The reality is that there is no clarity in the Minister of State's Department in how it is approaching this particular building, The Crofton apartments, in Dún Laoghaire. It is leaving in the lurch the residents, who through no fault of their own find themselves in a situation where they will have to pay for a remediation that in 2024 was assessed at €1.1 million for 25 apartments. It is a serious amount of money for each apartment holder but it will be more now because over two years since that assessment was made, you can be absolutely sure that the cost of that remediation has gone up. What really puzzles me is that nothing has changed between the time in May 2024 when the Minister of State's Department said they were part of the scheme, they would get the grant and they would get the support of the Department to help them fix the fire regulation and the fire safety systems in their building and March 2026, when suddenly a U-turn was done by the Department of housing through the Housing Agency, which administers the scheme, and they were told sorry but they were out in the cold, the Department was not going to help them and they would have to sort themselves out. Which is it? Can we give these people a little bit of reassurance that they will be looked after by the State when they have paid all their taxes? --- 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/2026-09-22/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:49+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-22