Defective Concrete Blocks Social Homes Scheme 2026: Motion
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-23
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Paul Nicholas Gogarty (IND), Dublin Mid-West

I join other speakers in welcoming that 2,400 social housing units are being brought into the scheme. It is an entirely necessary, if somewhat delayed, move. However, as colleagues also mentioned, the proposal, in its current form, basically creates a two-tier system that again treats social housing tenants as second-class citizens. We saw that in the quality of construction of some social homes, with levels of insulation being historically of inferior construction and design, although that has improved in more recent times. While private homeowners are still not getting the 100% redress they want, they will be able to avail of the independent technical review mechanisms.
However, local authority tenants will not have the same safeguard. Private owners who dispute an engineering assessment have some way of appealing it and challenging decisions. Unfortunately, the poor social housing tenants do not have that ability. While I can see why this would be organised by approved housing body or on an estate-by-estate basis, rather than by individual tenants, the latter should still be able to have a voice. They are living in, or are unable to live in, conditions that are absolutely substandard. If they want to challenge some sort of remediation works that have been outlined, they cannot do so individually. They are supposed to accept whatever the council decides. As I have seen, when planning and rezoning proposals are foisted on people with no infrastructure provision guaranteed, council officials are often inclined not necessarily to do the bidding of the Government but certainly not to be seen to fight back against it, at least not in the public eye. In that context, we need the same type of guaranteed technical oversight for social housing tenants as is proposed for private homeowners. There are only 2,400 social housing units involved at the outset but perhaps there should be a representative expert people can call upon or some other means of giving them a stake in this. The people living in social houses are stakeholders even if they do not have legal ownership rights.
In introducing this scheme, the Government is trying to move towards parity between private owners and social housing tenants. However, as Deputy Charles Ward has said time and again, there is no point in giving redress unless it is 100% redress. Private homeowners are not getting what they absolutely need and people in public sector housing are getting even less.
It is not parity. The situation is that those in private households can possibly better afford top-up loans, whereas people who live in AHB or council homes cannot do that in order to get the final bits done. Will the likes of the county councils in Donegal, Mayo or the other counties where issues have been identified find the requisite additional funding to bridge gaps? That is, of course, if they are in a position to identify those gaps in the first place. This needs to be revisited to make sure that any queries that are genuinely raised by people can and are seen to be addressed.

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Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-23