Defective Concrete Blocks Social Homes Scheme 2026: Motion Dail Éireann — 2026-09-23 ============================================================ Eoin Ó Broin (SF), Dublin Mid-West The tenants in local authority and approved housing bodies social housing stock impacted by defective concrete blocks have been waiting a very long time for this scheme. I have to say that, like its parent scheme, the Minister is making an absolute mess of it. The defective concrete blocks scheme is itself defective. The Minister should talk to homeowners in Donegal, Mayo, Clare and Fingal. They will tell him it is not 100% redress. They will also tell him that they are spending tens upon thousands of euro to fill the gap. In fact, many people are not applying at all. The latest figures from the Minister's own Department show very clearly that only 604 applicants of the tens of thousands of impacted homeowners have completed remediation works. The idea that he can just incorporate social housing into this defective scheme really shows he does not understand the scale of the problems. What is worse is that local authorities and approved housing bodies have told the Minister and his officials that they have real concerns about what is in front of us. They are not at all clear about what costs are going to be covered. Will costs incurred to date be covered? Will preventative costs be covered? Will ancillary costs, non-construction costs and disposal costs be covered? The basic principle here is that local authorities should not have to come up with a single cent of money from their own resources to remediate these homes. What about conjoined buildings? AHBs and local authorities, particularly in Donegal and Mayo, have many buildings attached that are not eligible under the DCB scheme, and there is no certainty here. It is the same with foundations. Again, this matter has not been resolved. Probably the worst element of this scheme is that the Minister is saying to the local authorities that they should rebuild the homes to the old standards. The reason that makes even less sense in a State scheme is because the State will ultimately have to pay additional money to bring those homes up to new standards, including of energy efficiency. If the Minister is going to do this right, and homes have to be demolished and rebuilt, he should build them to modern standards, because the State has to fund this cost anyway. I do not understand why the Minister did not just fund this through the normal social housing capital programme. Incorporating them into a grant scheme is simply ludicrous. At a minimum, there is a very clear request from the local authorities and the AHBs for a working group comprising departmental officials, local authority officials and elected members from the affected counties. I would add tenants' representative bodies as well. It needs to be set up immediately to manage the scheme's implementation. The local authorities and AHBs are not satisfied with this. We also need to have more Oireachtas scrutiny. We do not know the full details of what we are being asked to vote on here today, and meanwhile the overall scheme has to be fixed. I welcome the fact that a review has now started but there is no indication of whether there will be a public element to it. Will the public be invited to make submissions? Will there be some transparency around that? I urge the Minister to do that. While we are not going to stand in the way of this motion today, could the Minister please not take that as endorsing what he is doing? He is making a terrible mess. We are asking him to reconsider and ensure that every local authority and AHB and, crucially, the tenants who live in their homes, have those homes remediated as a matter of urgency without the local authorities having to foot any portion of the bill. If the Minister does not do that, it will disincentivise remediation and homes will be left behind. --- 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/2026-09-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:49+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-23