Across the State, tens of thousands of homeowners and tenants are living in homes built during the Celtic tiger era that have serious building defects. These homes typically have no fire stopping measures, causing significant fire safety concerns. At the most extreme, they have no adequate fire escapes. Many properties have water ingress, that is, moisture seeping into the structure of the building, slowly eroding the fabric of the home over time. People have to deal with damp and mould and, in the long term, their homes will crumble apart. Other homes have issues with car parks, cladding, communal doors and lifts.
These homeowners bought their homes in good faith. They paid their hard cash for their homes. Tenants in both social and private rental accommodation pay their rent on time and yet find themselves living in unsafe and insecure defective homes. They did nothing wrong. Those responsible in the first instance are the builders and developers who ignored basic fire safety and building standards but the State also has a responsibility because light-touch regulation and a lack of independent local authority inspection allowed this to happen. Yet, to date, homeowners have been left to foot the bill for dodgy building and weak regulation.
When they retired, Gary and Lorraine Carew bought their dream home in Brú na Sionna in Ennis. They looked forward to their life free from debt after decades of hard work. However, after they moved in, defects were discovered and they now face bills running into tens of thousands of euro in their retirement. In my own constituency, homeowners of hundreds of apartments in the Ivy Exchange development on Parnell Street face bills of anything up to €80,000 to deal with defects for which they bear no responsibility. Sam and Odette Doran live in an apartment in Parkwest, which they bought during the Celtic tiger period. The hard-working couple were sold the dream of secure home ownership in one of our city's new suburbs. Today, they face a bill of up to €40,000 to fix defects they did not cause. Like their neighbours and like so many other families, they simply do not have that kind of money. To add insult to injury, on the discovery of these defects in Parkwest, the insurance company for the apartments pushed up the premiums year on year, from €30,000 to a staggering €190,000 per year, with homeowners on the hook for that bill. This insurance company has now threatened to walk away completely, which is a really frightening prospect.
Sam and Odette, Lorraine and Gary and all of the others are part of the Not Our Fault 100% Redress campaign. Along with the Construction Defects Alliance, the group has been campaigning for redress for years and is protesting outside the Dáil today. Caithfidh an Rialtas gealltanas a sholáthar dóibh siúd a bhfuil cónaí orthu i dtithe ina bhfuil lochtanna ó thréimhse an tíogair Cheiltigh. Níor cheart go mbeadh ar na daoine seo billí na bhforbróirí agus an drochrialaithe a íoc. Last year, the Government finally agreed to put in place a defects redress scheme. On 18 January of this year, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, met with the families and promised them two things: emergency funding for essential fire safety and other works to be made available this year and the publication of legislation to underpin the redress scheme before the end of this year. There are now five weeks left in the Dáil calendar and there has been no emergency funding and no legislation has been published. When will that funding be available? When will we see the legislation? When will the full redress scheme be opened for applications?
