Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 6 Dec 2022

Vol. 1030 No. 5

Building Defects: Motion (Resumed) [Private Members]

Debate resumed on the following motion:

That Dáil Éireann:

welcomes the publication of the Report of the Working Group to Examine Defects in Housing;

notes that the report:

— estimates up to 100,000 homes could be affected by building defects;

— estimates that the cost of remediating these defects could be as high a €2.5 billion; and

— outlines options for the creation and financing of a redress scheme for those affected;

acknowledges that:

— light touch building control regulations by the Government, and shoddy practice in the construction industry were the cause of these defects; and

— homeowners are not responsible for these defects;

supports homeowners and tenants call for a 100 per cent redress;

recognise the growing frustration amongst homeowners and tenants due to the delay in bringing forward an appropriate redress scheme, given that the current Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Darragh O'Brien TD, and the Government have now been in office two and a half years;

regrets that even if the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, announces a building defects scheme in early 2023, based on the experience of the Enhanced Defective Concrete Blocks Grant Scheme, homeowners may be unable to access such a scheme and receive funding for remediation until 2024 at the earliest, due to the slow pace in bringing forward legislation and regulations and the lack of any provision for such a scheme in Budget 2023; and

calls on the Government to establish a redress scheme for all homes impacted by Celtic Tiger era building defects as a matter of urgency; and

agrees that the redress scheme:

— should consider expanding the terms of reference of the Pyrite Resolution Board to ensure the scheme opens in early 2023, with amending legislation where required;

— should operate as an end-to-end scheme, similar to the current Pyrite Resolution Board, rather than a grant scheme;

— should prioritise those developments with the greatest level of fire safety and structural risk;

— should provide interim funding for emergency works and short-term measures, such as fire wardens in advance of a full redress;

— should be retrospective for those forced to pay for remediation of defects in advance of the opening of the scheme; and

— must also include social landlords, including local authorities and Approved Housing Bodies.

- (Deputy Eoin Ó Broin)

Deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh

I welcome, as have others, the owners and residents in the Gallery and those who are watching from home, some from my constituency of Dublin South-Central, including residents of The Crescent in Park West, Metropolitan Apartments, the Tramyard and many other apartment blocks and housing complexes. People, not just from my constituency but throughout the country, are facing demands of tens of thousands of euro to carry out even initial repairs to make safe the homes they thought were their own and were secure and fire safe when they purchased them. That is without the €40,000 and €50,000 that will follow as a demand. The demand in The Crescent is €67,000 per home. Nobody I know among those who own those properties has that to foot up. We are in a housing and cost-of-living crisis and yet that is the demand.

We know who caused the problem. We know that developers and builders took shortcuts and risked the lives of people who are now in those homes. We need an immediate announcement from the Government. I welcome what the Minister said but we need the scheme to offer 100% redress and to be retrospective. That would allow the management companies, residents and owners take immediate steps to make their apartments safe and to draw down money, if they can. If the Government announces that, those people can probably go to the banks. The Minister said he talked to the banks. One of the solutions needs to be that they can draw down money from the banks, once the Government has indicated the scheme will offer 100% redress and will be retrospective.

If we are to wait months or years, we are asking those people to stay in properties that are not safe. The State is asking that. The Government has an opportunity to take immediate action. We are asking residents to sleep in their beds, while worrying and continuing to stress about the building around them. We need to take further steps a lot more quickly than the Minister indicated. Even though progress has been made, we need that scheme to be made retrospective immediately.

Deputy Seán Crowe

The Minister said he understood the problem. The next step is to try to resolve it. He said it cannot be done in a rushed fashion and he mentioned that it might take up to ten years. I do not think anyone I have talked to, and there are a number of affected residents in my constituency, including in Ballycullen, Citywest and Rathfarnham, can wait that long. They are terrified, afraid and extremely angry because there is common agreement that homeowners are not responsible for defects that are due to light-touch building control.

The really galling thing is that developers can walk away, liquidate their company, reinvent themselves and start trading across the road. There is something sick in a society that allows that. There is something wrong with corporate Ireland if that is the way we will allow things to continue to go on. That is what is happening at present. Many of these developers made significant sums of money during the Celtic tiger. Many of them liquidated themselves and, as I said, have reinvented themselves under the names of their sons or daughters, or even just changed the name or initial of their companies to reinvent themselves. The challenge for the owners is they are then left with that property.

Let us talk about the owners. Some of them downsized and moved to apartments believing that now that their mortgage was cleared they would be able to retire and get on with their lives. They are now faced with this huge worry. We need to do more to support them. It is not acceptable that developers can walk away. It is about 100% redress. It is about coming up with a scheme that works. It has to be fast and deliver for ordinary people. The common message we can all agree on is that we need to come up with ideas and we need ideas soon.

Deputy Dessie Ellis

Tens of thousands of homeowners throughout the country are faced with the prospect of having to find large sums of money to pay for essential remediation works on homes and apartments that have a range of structural defects, including fire safety issues, with either poorly installed or no fire stopping with fire resistant materials in openings or joints between walls and floors, water ingress leading to leaky roofs and water running down the inside of windows leading to mould and dampness in rooms. Campaign groups have estimated that as many as 100,000 homeowners living in homes constructed between 1991 and 2013 are affected by a range of defects that will require urgent repair and refurbishment. It is also estimated that up to 90,000 residences are affected by fire safety defects. In this time of economic uncertainty and a cost-of-living crisis, who would be able readily to find the huge sums being demanded to fix problems not of residents' making?

In my constituency of Dublin North-West, some newly built homes constructed as part of the Ballymun regeneration project in Owensilla, Silloge and parts of the Carton area, suffered damage caused by the defective building material pyrite. A total of 274 houses and apartments in these developments were found to be defective and most of these have been remediated by Dublin City Council. In some cases, the State's regulatory regime allowed errant behaviour by developers who built poor-quality residences. This proved costly to both the State and the council, which had to shoulder the cost to correct these defects.

We are in a housing emergency but 58 apartments in the Prospect Hill complex in Finglas have been lying idle for more than 15 years. Construction began in 2004 on council-owned land. The builders entered into an agreement with Dublin City Council to supply it with 150 affordable homes and 35 senior citizen apartments. Those builders went into receivership in 2012. In 2014, repairs and refurbishment were to be carried out by Clúid, which was to begin allocating the apartments to families. These apartments are still lying idle and were later found to be non-compliant with fire safety standards. In recent years, they have been transferred to Dublin City Council. Area E, the Dublin City Council area in which they are located, has a huge housing waiting list and a homeless problem. It is beyond belief that these apartments continue to be vacant.

Deputy Martin Browne

I welcome all the homeowners who are in the Gallery. I also recognise them for the pressure they have exerted over the years to get us to this point. As this motion suggests, there is some way to go.

We must ensure that the right path is taken so that homeowners are compensated fully and as swiftly as possible.

Under 20% of Tipperary's total number of apartment duplexes constructed between 1991 and 2016 were represented in the report of the Working Group to Examine Defects in Housing. This is a significant number. As the organisations involved would agree, the full extent of the problem is not known, so it would be remiss of me not to speak on this motion in the interests of my constituents.

Sinn Féin believes that the homeowners and tenants are not responsible for these defects. The Safe as Houses? report argued that the light-touch regulation introduced by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil and the shoddy practices in the industry during the Celtic tiger led to common defects. Those affected should not be picking up the bill just to make their homes safe. Thankfully, the Construction Defects Alliance has not let up in its campaign. With the support of us and others, it has forced the current Government to move away from the position of the Fine Gael minority Government that tried to put the burden on the homeowners and tenants. After two and a half years, though, the current Government has provided no clarity on a redress scheme. If one is introduced on the same basis as the enhanced defective concrete blocks scheme, homeowners may not be able to access it and receive funding for remediation until 2024 at the earliest. Never mind a sticking plaster solution; just introduce a scheme for which these families do not need to wait another two years. This is why we are calling on the Government to establish a redress scheme urgently for all impacted homes, to expand the terms of reference of the Pyrite Resolution Board, to ensure the scheme opens in 2023 and to provide interim funding for emergency works in the meantime. The scheme must be retrospective for those forced to pay for the remediation of defects and prioritise those developments with the greatest levels of fire safety and structural risk.

People who have put their lives' investments into these properties should not be asked to bear the burden of poor building controls and regulation by previous Governments led by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this important motion. I welcome those in the Public Gallery who are directly affected by this issue. I can only imagine what they are thinking listening to this debate. Possibly, it is that they have heard all of this before.

It is difficult to think of another national scandal that displays the worst of what Ireland is and has been. Moneyed developers maximised their profits, often by lobbying for the political system to bow to them. In many instances, they constructed fire traps. They let people buy these at exorbitant prices and, as has been rightly said, they then liquidated, reimagined, renamed and re-established themselves and never had to take responsibility for what they did.

A number of aspects strike those of us who deal with families in this situation. The first is the fear they are living with constantly. They go to bed looking at the ceilings and walls around them that they are mentally at war with because they believe that where they live could kill them. There is a sense of guilt that they are raising their families in apartments that could kill them. The worst part is that they cannot even talk about it because they are worried about the reputational damage the apartment block or area would suffer. They want to be careful in their language in case the media reports on these death traps, leading to the investments they have made and the mortgages they have been paying effectively becoming worthless. It is a devastating set of circumstances. This national scandal has cost lives. I remember a man called Fiachra Daly. At the height of the Priory Hall scandal, he took his own life because of the pressure that he and his family were under.

Whenever the history of this situation is written, it will rank as one of the major national scandals in terms of how badly Ireland and politics in this country worked and how much power these developers had to change the political, planning and regulatory systems to get what they wanted and build what they wanted to whatever standard they wanted in order to maximise their profits. As soon as anything came back to their door, they just changed who they were to avoid taking responsibility and kept going. It is remarkable. When you sit down with these families and ask who they can take a case against, it turns out that they cannot because the cowboys who built the homes that could kill them do not exist anymore. The families cannot talk about it because they are worried that the reputational damage will hurt their investments and they hope that some work can be done to repair their properties before they ever have to discuss the situation. It is a vice grip on people's bodies, minds and families.

The families in the Public Gallery, those I am dealing with and thousands more are dependent on - I was going to say the Minister, but he is correct - us. They do not want to hear a political squabble, point scoring and us one-upping one another. We are probably at a better stage now in terms of getting somewhere towards resolving the situation than we were in recent years. I do not want people who are listening to this debate in the Public Gallery to go home angry and just angry. They need to go home from this debate feeling that they might get somewhere. When they heard "ten years", I am sure it broke their hearts a little.

Deputy Darragh O'Brien

That is not the waiting time. It is the scale of the programme.

Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin

I accept that, but we have to be careful. When we speak about timelines, we need to be sure that we can bring people on board and they can have a level of hope.

I agree with other Deputies who stated that we must discuss absolute redress and consider the situation retrospectively over the past 30 years or so. We must also ensure as a collective that this scandal never happens again. In the current discourse, it appears that a political representative cannot have an opinion on any planned apartment complex in any part of the country, but it is only fair and reasonable that the political system work to be as critical and strongly observant of what developers do today as ever.

I wish to focus on the solutions. We want to work with the Minister in a timely manner and to ensure that funding is available to fix not just these homes, but these lives. We want to ensure that parents who are concerned about their children growing up in entities that could seriously harm them can have the prospect in a short time of resting their heads on their pillows and not worrying. This issue is soul destroying and life defining. Imagine reaching 60, 65 or 70 years of age, looking back on your life and realising that, for 20 years or more of it, you were terrified going to bed every night and waking up every morning and you paid thousands of euro because you did nothing more than make the mistake of trusting someone who sold you a home that they had undergone the process to ensure it worked.

The families have heard all this rhetoric before. We want a system that works, that is timely and that is funded. We do not want anyone to have to put their hands in their pockets. We want justice from those entities that did this in the first place. We want to ensure this never ever happens again. It is a national scandal and on the same level as any other national scandal we have ever dealt with in these Houses. It must be treated as such and we must all work with the Minister to get answers and justice for the families present and for any other families affected by this issue. I refer as well to those families who do not even realise they have been affected. In the case of my constituency, I do not even feel as if I can list off the apartment blocks and residents groups I have been dealing with. On one level, I am not sure if they would thank me. This is the level of fear we are dealing with. I hope the Minister appreciates this point. We all have a responsibility to get this right and to get it right soon.

Deputy Cian O'Callaghan

I join with others in welcoming everyone in the Gallery and everyone watching these proceedings. I wish to make several points, the first following on from where Deputy Ó Ríordáin finished in respect of ensuring this never happens again. This afternoon, we had representatives from the National Building Control and Market Surveillance Office, NBCMSO, the National Standards Authority of Ireland and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage before the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage to discuss the issue of quarries and defective materials. Two points arose from that discussion that should not be the case if all of us are 100% committed to ensuring this never happened again.

First, we could not get a clear answer from the Department regarding how many people work in building control in local authorities. I, and other Deputies, have tabled written questions to the Minister on this issue. The question of how many people are working to ensure something like this never happens again is important. How many people are working in inspecting new developments and buildings is something the Minister and the Department should be interested in, have oversight of and be concerned about. Yet the response we got was that the Department does not keep this kind of information. If we are all committed to this type of monitoring, the very least we should have is oversight of this at national level. We should have full information in this regard.

The second issue of note stemming from the committee meeting relates to the resources available for building control and the NBCMSO, which is doing excellent work. In as much as the representatives of any public agency will ever say this, because they are under pressure not to, but as much as it could be said, given they do that job really well and they are highly committed, it was clear that this is a small team that could be resourced better. When we think of the devastation and stress caused to individuals and families and the billions of euro in costs incurred because of this issue, it is inexplicable that the NBCMSO, which does important work, would be under-resourced. This must be addressed.

Turning to accountability for developers, which other Deputies have mentioned, one thing could be done now if the Government were serious about this issue. Some of the developers involved made great profits from selling homes, marketing them and an entire lifestyle to go with them, and then shut down those companies once this difficulty arose. They then set up new companies and are making large profits again. Cairn Holmes was referred to earlier. Its operating profits this year are predicted to run to €200 million. The company's revenue increased by 84% in the first six months of this year. This is to give an example of just one large developer. One thing that could be done now to ensure people can no longer hide behind company law is to amend it in the context of residential construction and ensure that directors are accountable for what companies do. Winding up companies should not be a get out of jail free card for them. This would bring some accountability to the system. Another action would be to ensure that developers must have latent defects insurance to operate and build. I tabled amendments to this effect to legislation passed by the Government in the past year. Unfortunately, the Government did not support my proposed amendments. If, however, latent defects insurance was required, that would mean that anyone building shoddy homes simply would not be able to get insurance. This would remove them from the system and provide some support for residents caught in this type of situation.

There has been some good discussion concerning the timeframes in this regard. There is great urgency with this process. People's lives are on hold. It is difficult for them to deal with this situation, and all the stress it produces and, at the same time, progress all the other aspects of their lives. There is, therefore, an urgency in this regard. No one is asking for a rushed job here. We want this done properly, but as quickly as possible. There is agreement that this should be done on a statutory basis and that legislation should be put in place. I have not heard anyone argue otherwise. This should, though, be done as fast as we can. These mistakes came from rushed building and a sticking plaster attitude to construction. There is no reason to fail have a robust and quick response to this issue that is also well worked out. Many of these issues arose ten and more years ago. It has been almost three years since the last election. To expect measures to be in place is not expecting too much in terms of urgency regarding dealing with this issue.

Regarding what needs to happen, some excellent proposals have been put forward by the Construction Defects Alliance and the Apartment Owners' Network. One concerned remediation and the urgent need for it. Another was that inclusion is important in the context of retrospective measures. Anyone who has carried out expensive works should be included in the scheme. It would be blatantly unfair otherwise. It is also important to think about that issue in terms of apartment complexes and how they are run by volunteer directors serving on owners' management companies, OMCs. Many of these have major difficulties in collecting management fees and running those companies. Putting this extra burden on them will be a heavy weight to bear. The remediation scheme must recognise the reality these people are experiencing, namely, that some of these OMCs have difficulty collecting management fees. If the scheme, therefore, excludes some of the homes and owners, this will make it unworkable for some of the OMCs. Regarding the Minister's comments concerning how far it will be extended, there is a need for upfront funding for apartment blocks. For any of the multi-unit owners, then, trying to find a way of clawing this back through the taxation system would be the way forward. Partial funding for most will just not work. It would mean this situation will drag for many more years and put the volunteers running the OMCs under even more pressure. As the Minister will be aware, in some places, because of all the stress stemming from the impact of that issue, the directors have resigned. This leaves an OMC in a weaker position. New directors may come in with less experience and all the resulting issues that then creates. There is a strong case that this scheme should be run like the Pyrite Resolution Board. This is a good model. We should learn from its experience and expertise accrued. It would also be more cost-effective if this process was one where the repairs were overseen by the Pyrite Resolution Board, or its successor, rather than putting all this responsibility on the OMCs.

The Minister said that he is going to bring interim measures forward. When will that happen, given that they will be interim? In the context of the timelines in this regard, when is the legislation going to come through? When is the scheme going to be up and running?

The least that people in this situation deserve is concrete information on that from the Minister in terms of their lives being on hold.

Let us reflect on our housing system. People pay some of the highest prices in Europe for homes. Developers make huge profits. The regulation system has been incredibly weak. Even now, especially given what we heard this afternoon, everything is not being done to ensure that we do not have a repeat of this. There have been improvements in regulation, but are we doing our best in terms of regulation? Do we have independent inspections in place? We do not have a national building control agency, which is needed. We do not have the requirement for latent defects insurance. We do not have those changes in company law to hold directors of construction companies that do this to account so that they cannot hide behind closing down a company. There are immediate things that should be done now to rectify that.

Deputy Bríd Smith

I wish to share time with Deputy Boyd Barrett.

I welcome everybody into the Gallery. It is not our Gallery; it is theirs. It is always good to see the public come in to the Parliament because it has that dynamic of putting manners on lots of people in here. They are very welcome.

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling the motion prior to the end of the year because it is hugely important that we discuss this. I doubt it will be our last discussion on the matter.

On the previous occasion we had a discussion on this, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, was sitting where the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage is and he replied to Deputy Paul Murphy, who has been working closely with representatives of the Not Our Fault campaign who are in the Gallery, that no matter what the Government does, it will not be good enough for People Before Profit, and that we will not accept anything. We and the campaigners will accept 100% redress. That is what they will accept and People Before Profit will be happy when they see that delivered. Tonight, the Minister should at least give a commitment to the people in the Gallery that they will be treated no differently from the other groups that have been failed by the State - the mica groups and the pyrite groups - which had to campaign to get justice.

It is about the State's failure. I will not take lectures from other Deputies about point scoring. It is important to talk about the truth of what happened here. The "RTÉ Investigates" programme did a lot to bring it out. When we talk about estates failure, it is not an oversight. It is not a lapse, a blunder or somebody forgetting to look at something. It was a deliberate policy of both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to treat builders and developers with kid gloves, allow them to self-regulate and, therefore, put these people into this position. Those parties do not stop there. They have rezoned lands for them and they have more or less married the developer and the building industry in a way that is shocking and unbelievable. We must move away from that legacy. The Minister's commitment tonight to these people that he will give them 100% redress, he will work out a formula, it will be legislated for, etc., would be a fantastic Christmas gift or Christmas payback to people who deserve it. It is no exaggeration to say that the housing crisis and the defective apartment crisis both have their roots in the same problem, that is, the closeness of the political establishment to the developer-led and builder-led model, and we should start by recognising 100% redress is what is needed.

I want to address some other issues around the report itself. We welcome most elements of the report, particularly regarding the scale of the revelations as to the number of homes involved. However, it is quite clear to anyone who watched the "RTÉ Investigates" special that the builders and developers knew exactly how to build apartments. It was in their plans and those plans were signed off by local authorities and professionals. They did not build them in the way they were meant to build them, not because of complexities of buildings but because it was cheaper and they could make more profits by taking shortcuts. To suggest otherwise is misleading and an attempt to obscure who is responsible and why they are responsible.

The infuriating omission from the report is the refusal and the discouragement of any attempt to seek out who is responsible for the massive number of defective apartments. The report only states that many developments were done by special purpose vehicles or that developers-builders may have gone out of business. This is speculative and not based on any attempt by the report and its authors to find out who was behind the defective apartments and whether many of them are still operating. There are people in the Gallery to whom I have spoken who face a €65,000 plus bill to remediate their homes that are dangerous to live in and they can look out their window across a field from the apartment and see the developer who built their home building another complex today. They know who it is. It would not take rocket science on the part of the State to find out exactly who it is and to go after them. They have not disappeared into the ether. They have not been teleported to another dimension. They are still very much involved in the trade and working in the industry. Most importantly, they knowingly put the lives of 100,000 people, or a big chunk of them, at risk by not living up to the standards, particularly around fire protection. Cutting costs to maximise profits was what they were all about.

It might be worth our while looking across the water to what happened in Britain post Grenfell where a tax was placed on the profits of the residential development industry. We need to look at a long-term tax on the industry's profits that is designed in a way that they cannot pass on the cost and that there is no escaping from it. In the meantime, it behoves the Minister to say that the State will own up to its failures and give the reassurance and the 100% redress required by these people because of the culture that exists. We have a culture that led us this week to Liberty Lane where 27 young students lived in danger because a builder thought it was okay to break the law and create a defective apartment block for them that he was charging €500 to €700 a month for, and that was totally illegal. All those students face eviction on Friday because it is not safe to live in those apartments. The fire officer is extraordinarily worried about them. The builder has walked away with approximately €16,000 a month of their money. I believe they are owed that money back. The State needs to do much more to recreate a culture where builders and developers are held accountable and where there are consequences for them when they put lives and livelihoods at risk.

Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett

I have little to add to what Deputy Smith said on the substantive issue except to encourage those in the Construction Defects Alliance, the Apartment Owners' Network and all those campaigning on this issue to keep up their battle. It is because they have campaigned that they are forcing this discussion in this House and that they will force the Government to give them the 100% redress they want and deserve, and accountability for those profit-hungry cowboys who were let off the leash by successive Governments. The fact that the Government let these people off the leash who were willing to leave the homeowners with the trauma of unsafe buildings and huge financial costs means the Government owes them. The Minister needs to give that commitment tonight. He needs to engage every step of the way with the people in the Gallery and the other groups to ensure at an absolute minimum they get the 100% redress that the mica campaigners and the pyrite campaigners fought for, and accountability for the rogues and cowboys who did this.

In the brief time I have available, I will address another group and pose a series of questions which the Minister probably does not have the answer to. Information has been brought to me to the effect that the Housing Agency is now suspending payments and further leases to Home For Life, the private entity that was set up in 2007 and approved to do mortgage to rent for people with mortgages in distress, on the basis that it has not done repairs to defects in buildings. Hundreds of people had their homes bought by Home for Life and Home for Life is getting paid rent by local authorities. Those people are, therefore, now local authority tenants.

As I understand it this is because defects were not being remedied and repairs were not being done. It poses the question as to whether hundreds of people in Home for Life are living in unsafe buildings. We need to find this out quickly. Did the local authorities that did the arrangements for Home for Life do the surveys they were supposed to do? They were supposed to inspect those houses within 90 days to make sure the repairs had been done. Certainly in the cases I have come across this did not happen. Are hundreds of people living in unsafe places? Were the local authorities at fault for not doing proper surveys? What was Home for Life doing? Essentially it had cornered the market for mortgage to rent but was not willing to put in the money to remedy structural defects and other problems that may render the houses unsafe.

What will now happen if Home for Life is in trouble? The Minister needs to come back to me on this. I do not expect answers tonight. If the company is in trouble, what will happen to the 480 people approved for mortgage to rent to prevent the repossession of their homes and the more than 700 people in Home for Life who may have defects or problems that need to be remedied? The State has to remedy these defects and protect these people if Home for Life has let them down and if council and statutory regulations were not adequate to protect them.

Deputy Seán Canney

I welcome the opportunity to contribute again on this particular problem that has developed over a good few years. There are people in the Gallery who are on the front line and affected by the problems and the defects that have arisen. It will cost the State an awful lot of money to put this right but that is what it has to do. We have to make sure that everybody is taken care of and that the people who have defective houses and apartments are put right. I get emails, as I am sure does everyone else, from people who own apartments that have been found to be defective. They are looking at bills of €80,000 or €90,000 to put them right. They cannot afford this and it is not right. We need to bite the bullet on this.

I would like to concentrate on the regulations in place. I come from a construction background and I believe we have plenty of regulations. We have plenty of people who can write a certificate. We have plenty of people who get well paid for all of that. What we do not have is proper building control. We all speak about building controls as if they are happening but they are not. Local authorities are not resourced to carry out building controls in the way they should. The construction of houses and apartments has become complicated, with far more services going into the buildings. There is a greater chance that people will miss out on sealing all of the barriers required for fireproofing and certification. This needs significant and independent building control. If we are serious about not repeating these mistakes, we need to make sure we fund our local authorities properly so they can carry out inspections. There should not be just one or two building officers in each local authority. That is tokenism and will not work. There needs to be enforcement. It needs to be seen to be there and felt to be there so that people will not even contemplate taking a shortcut in construction.

Another issue that continues to gall me is structural guarantee insurance bonds. Banks require people who are buying houses and apartments to have this in place. There are structural guarantee schemes whereby people pay €500 or €600 for an insurance policy that is not worth the paper it is written on. However, the banking system and the local authority home loans system continue to insist on having these structural guarantee schemes in place. The householder has to pay €600 or €700 for the joy of getting a piece of paper that is flushed down the toilet the minute something happens or goes wrong. There is no one there to carry out work on the structural defects. It is terrible that this continues to be how we deal with matters.

We have another issue that has never been discussed much here, although I have raised it on several occasions. A large number of private housing schemes in this country are serviced by wastewater treatment plants built by the contractors and developers. The same wastewater treatment plants are in limbo because Irish Water is refusing to take them in charge. Local authorities are also refusing to have anything to do with them. The residents are left with the maintenance and all that goes wrong with this type of equipment. They have to fix it. Earlier this evening I spoke to residents who are having a meeting tonight about their estate and what they will do. They are faced with a problem whereby money needs to be spent on sewage treatment and they do not have it. They pay the local property tax and all the other taxes they should pay. They paid stamp duty when they bought the properties, yet Irish Water, the local authorities and the Government are refusing to recognise that there is an environmental time bomb in this regard. The people living on these estates do not have the resources to manage these treatment plants. Once and for all we have to grasp this nettle to make sure everybody in the country is given a fair hand and a fair house to live in.

Deputy Peter Fitzpatrick

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important issue. A working group report that examined defects in housing found that a lack of fire safety material, structural defects and water ingress are likely to affect up to 80% of apartments and duplexes built between 1991 and 2013 in the Celtic tiger era, which equates to between 62,500 and 100,000 homes. This percentage is shocking.

People save for years to purchase a property. Fire safety defects are among the most significant issues, specifically in apartment blocks. It is common that solicitors or lenders insist on a survey prior to purchase, whereby an inspection is carried out of the unit being purchased but not communal areas. However, in one case fire defects that were subsequently highlighted are costing owners in an apartment block up to €70,000 to repair on top of paying €2,450 per annum in management fees. This is in a building that received a fire certificate two years before the build. The problem is that fire certificates were approved and granted to developers based on submitted plans. No further inspection or follow up was carried out to ensure compliance with the plans. Defective construction work is in breach of building contracts but it is common for developers to claim liquidation, set up a new company and build down the road from the defective buildings. That is not right.

The homeowners are not responsible for these defects. Light-touch building control regulation by the Government and shoddy practice in the construction industry were the cause of these defects, yet the homeowners are being made to pay for these errors and the crooked developers are getting away with it scot-free. There should be no statute of limitations for developers who are no longer deemed liable. They are working the system.

It is only right and just that tenants are seeking to recoup the cost of remedial works in the form of 100% redress. The report of the working group to examine defects in housing outlines options for the creation and financing of a redress scheme for those affected, with the cost of remediating these defects estimated to be as high as €2.5 billion.

A redress scheme for all homes impacted by Celtic tiger-era building defects needs to be set up as a matter of urgency. There is growing frustration among homeowners and tenants due to the delay in bringing forward an appropriate redress scheme. Homeowners may be unable to access such a scheme and receive funding for remediation until 2024 at the earliest due to the slow pace in bringing forward legislation and regulations and the lack of any provision for such a scheme in budget 2023. That is not good enough. I agree that current legislation on such schemes, including measures such as the Pyrite Resolution Board, could be amended to advance redress more rapidly. Additionally, in the interim, funding for emergency works and short-term measures should be made available in advance of a full redress.

An additional point that should be prioritised is that the scheme should be retrospective for those forced to pay for remediation of defects in advance of the opening of a redress scheme.

These are people’s lives we are talking about. What if, God forbid, something similar to Grenfell happens? This situation is breaching their rights to life and their rights to adequate housing. Let us stop playing a political game of football. Why do we continue to gloss over problems rather than getting to their root cause? Yes, there have been more thorough inspections implemented within the construction industry, but more needs to be done in terms of building control regulations. We also must ensure that latent defect insurance policies apply to cover homeowners against defects that cannot be perceived on purchase.

Would it not be beneficial to invest in a new building control scheme that would be independent and that would ensure that building regulations were met? With the housing crisis rising, we need to ensure that any new builds are compliant and are safe. We need a timeframe for redress for affected homeowners and we need this now.

A home is not just a home. A home is a meeting place for family and friends. Many of these people have children who cannot even take their friends around to their house. Many families have suffered over the last number of years. I know myself one wants a home to be home. Consider the amount of time that families spend away from their families when they are working, doing overtime and trying to get as much money as they can to pay their mortgage. These people have paid mortgages. They have paid their loans and they have done everything by the book. As I said earlier, the developers have walked away scot-free. I know that the Minister has given the commitment that he will rectify this, but it needs to be rectified now. How can you go home and talk to a child who is going to bed when the child looks up to the ceiling and is afraid that it will fall on top of them when they see cracks in the walls? I am talking about this as if this is my house. I guarantee the Minister of State that if it were his house he would not accept it either. This has to be done and it has to be sorted out. I hope that the Minister of State is going to chase these developers. Personally, I know of builders who have moved down the road, and although their building sites went into liquidation they still have their big, fancy cars, houses and everything else. The only people who have been affected are the honest, individual people who went away, who got a mortgage and who did a bit of overtime. I plead with the Minister of State to do it now, straightaway.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Bernard J. Durkan)

Deputies Mattie McGrath, Michael Collins, Michael Healy-Rae and O’Donoghue each have two minutes.

Deputy Danny Healy-Rae

There is nobody here, only me.

Acting Chairman (Deputy Bernard J. Durkan)

We will let you in.

Deputy Danny Healy-Rae

I am glad for the opportunity, first to welcome all the people here in the Gallery who have been affected by the light-touch regulations provided for by previous Governments. We see it here in Dublin, in Donegal, in Mayo and in different counties. When we talk about Donegal, we must remember that in Donegal houses are falling down around the people. We remember Bridie Gallagher in the 1960s and 1970s who sang about the homes in Donegal, even in my father's pub. Donegal people, and everyone, depend on their homes and they look forward to going home in the evening. It is sad when their homes, apartments or whatever are falling down around them. It is terrible and it is because of light-touch regulations.

To get back to the issue of Donegal, the same quarries in Donegal supplied counties such as Derry. It was the same material from the same quarries, but they took proper materials because there is no problem in the Six Counties, as has been highlighted today. Yet, we have problems here all over the country because of light-touch regulations made by previous Governments.

The current Government will have to ensure that people get redress and that they will get their homes in order because a person’s home is their castle. That is the one thing that they work for. They pay mortgages in the first place and they are paying it for the greater part of their working lives. They surely do not need to have problems as they move on in years and then have their apartments and their homes falling down around them.

I must speak about Kerry and the home relocation scheme that was in place to help people who were being flooded. I will mention one place in particular, Glenflesk. Because the river there had not been cleared out for years, homes became flooded and damaged. A home relocation scheme was put in place to help these people to buy other homes and to get out of the place. Sadly, at that time, the compensation they received was clearly not adequate to purchase the same quality of house away from the flood area. In recent times that river has been cleaned out and it has made a massive difference to the flooding situation. However, people’s homes were already damaged because of the stern refusal by the local authority, which would not agree to clearing out the river in the first place. Now their homes are damaged. While the river is clear now, those people who were on the relocation scheme were offered from €200,000 to €220,000. That is clearly not enough, given how costs have soared in recent times. They are not able to buy a house in another place because of the exorbitant costs.

There are also places like Birchill in Aghadoe and Aghadoe village, where people paid a lot of money for houses, but the treatment plant, or the treatment plans, were not adequate. These people paid adequately for the homes they bought at that time. In recent years, the Government allocated funds to address the treatment plants but that is not sufficient now, given the rising costs. I am appealing to this Government, and to the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke. Birchill and Aghadoe village are waiting for a proper treatment plant, as well as to be connected to the public sewer. The Government is not providing adequate funding to do that. I am appealing to the Minister to take that on board and to ensure that the people of Glenflesk, Aghadoe and Birchill get proper compensation and that they are seen after.

Deputy Michael Healy-Rae

At the beginning, I would like to thank sincerely Deputy Ó Broin and the Sinn Féin Party for tabling another excellent motion before Dáil Éireann, because it is only right to acknowledge the seriousness of the crisis that people are facing.

The first time this issue came to the fore in a big, public way was through the mica scandal, which started out in Donegal. I was so impressed with the nice people who came down to the Convention Centre Dublin, where we were then, and where they had been protesting during the Covid-19 times. Those people and families highlighted what they were facing. One issue that struck me at the time was that some people were doubly affected. There was a couple that might have been married and if one of the partners had a house before getting married and the other partner had a house, they actually had two properties that were falling down around them. It was a horrible situation. Meeting the children who were living in homes like that really brought home what can happen if people have a defective house.

The report by the working group, which was established by the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, to look at the defects issue, has found that problems such as a lack of fire safety material, structural defects and water ingress are present in up to 80% of apartments and duplexes built between 1991 and 2013. This equates to between 62,500 and 100,000 units. That is frightening. We know that apartments, houses or anything that is built correctly is great, but there is nothing in the world worse than an apartment that is built badly.

Someone in an apartment is in a box in the middle of a big box and if the whole lot is bad, my God, there is nothing worse. The price apartments cost during the boom and the Celtic tiger was frightening. A young girl from my home county of Kerry, which I am here to represent, came to Dublin, worked tremendously hard and bought an apartment here. Unfortunately, it is one of the affected apartments. Apartment owners were told at a recent housing meeting they had to put in the order of €60,000 into a fund. That is frightening money on top of already paying a mortgage. The young person in question is working and just trying to survive and keep her own. She was doing very well to come to Dublin and buy a place. It was a great thing for a young person to do but she got caught. The State has to look at cases such as that.

However we manage it, we have to put our shoulders to the wheel for those people. We have to stand shoulder to shoulder with them. We have to give them redress and be of assistance. It is only right and proper. They are taxpayers and workers. Look at what they contributed in VAT through the cost of the purchase of their properties. It is very important to assist them. That is why tonight is so important and why it is so important that people listen to this debate and take on board what Sinn Féin is seeking, which we will support. I ask the Government to rise out like it never did before and say it will stand shoulder to shoulder to face this problem, not just in Donegal but throughout the rest of the country where we have defective homes. People have invested their hearts, souls, lives, work, family and effort. Everything they have goes into their accommodation, whether it is a house, an apartment or other accommodation. It is where they wish to live and raise their families and there is nothing worse or more horrible than being in a defective place.

We have all seen it ourselves back over the years. If a wall is damp or bad, it is like a plague that will not go away. It will not go away or disappear. It has to be put right from the outside in. It cannot be camouflaged or painted over and one cannot let on it is not there. It is unhealthy for people and not good for them. We have old housing stock and we understand why that might be bad but we expect a new property to be good. Someone who is after paying through the nose for a property and is paying money for it every month but is married to a bank that has no sympathy, understanding or empathy will want that property to be right and good.

Deputy Thomas Pringle

It is very apparent as to who the winners and losers of the Celtic tiger are. We are sadly reminded of it over and over again through issues such as building defects. Sadly, the public is still paying the cost today, more than a decade later. It will continue to do so long into the future under a Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Government. There has been continuous fall-out from the reckless boom during the Celtic tiger years. Unsurprisingly, the public did not get a cut of the astronomical profits made by developers, investors and bankers but it is, of course, expected to pay for the debt, mistakes and greed because that is the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael way. They privatise the profits and socialise the losses.

For a Government that is so critical of the left, it is funny how socialism really works for it when it comes to debt and facilitating the greed of those cutting corners and causing unsafe living conditions for so many in this country. The report of the working group to examine defects on housing is a devastating read but, unfortunately, not a shocking one. It reports that up to 100,000 homes could be affected by building defects and that the cost of remediating these defects could be as high as €2.5 billion. There is nowhere in the country that has not been affected by building defects. My constituents in Donegal have been waiting for years for legislation to address deleterious materials in the concrete blocks that are causing their houses to fall down.

The Government made sure to rush the legislation through the Oireachtas before the summer break, allowing little time for scrutiny. As the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, claimed, the legislation had to be passed urgently in order that the enhanced scheme could open for applications as soon as possible. I have a word of warning for people in the apartments. The people affected by mica were told they were getting 100% redress. It is far from 100%. Six months later, there is still no sign of a scheme being implemented. Homeowners are stuck in limbo and their applications will not even be processed until the new year. It will be a long time after that before the affected homeowners see any benefit from this scheme.

It has now been revealed that fire safety defects have been uncovered on the Phoenix Park Racecourse development in Dublin, the largest development in the State. What will happen with that? Homeowners and tenants are not to blame for building defects. This Government, with its light-touch regulations, is to blame but the homeowners will have to carry the cost.

Deputy Joan Collins

I thank Deputy Ó Broin for bringing this important Private Members' motion to the Dáil. I welcome all the groups in the Public Gallery. I will refer to an email from a constituent who lives in the Tramyard apartments in Inchicore. As an apartment owner, she has been asked to pay an initial €7,000 for essential fire safety remedial works by the end of November, which was only a few days ago. She states the full cost of the necessary remedial works will be €25,000 over a four- or five-year period. What a burden to put on her shoulders when she had no part to play in it. That is just one example of the situation faced by the tens of thousands of people who live in the estimated 100,000 apartments affected by defects such as fire safety issues, structural defects and water ingress.

This is one of the many national scandals to emerge from the Celtic tiger era of light-touch regulation or, indeed, non-implementation of whatever regulations existed, corner-cutting and whatever could be got away with to maximise profits. The people who did not party have already footed the bill for the bank bailout and will be faced with the bills for the pyrite scandals and this particular bill for construction defects of between €1.5 billion and €2.5 billion and possibly much more.

The responsibility for this situation lies with the Fianna Fáil, Progressive Democrats, Fine Gael and Green Party Governments of the period, which failed in their responsibility to provide proper regulation, oversight and inspection of the building of these apartments and duplexes. Responsibility also lies with the construction industry for corner-cutting and shoddy work practices. It should be made to accept responsibility, as recommended by the Construction Defects Alliance, by paying a 2% tax on profits for at least ten years.

The Government must respond urgently to a situation whereby up to 100,000 inhabited apartments and duplexes are potential fire hazards. We do not want to have a Grenfell Tower scenario in this country. We need the immediate implementation of interim measures, namely, State funding to upgrade fire and smoke alarms and sensors in bedrooms, funding for fire wardens to help with evacuations, especially during night-time, and funding of emergency grants for urgent remediation works pending the establishment of a remediation support scheme. With regard to any such remediation support scheme, all necessary work should be fully funded up-front by the State, with cost recovery measures imposed on the construction industry. Those who have had to pay towards remediation works should be fully compensated. Owners' management companies must be given hands-on State support by a body such as the Pyrite Resolution Board. This requires legislation.

While this is a complex and costly issue, the people living with this problem, who are in no way responsible for it, must not be left waiting for two, five or ten years for a scheme to address it. These scandals should never be allowed to happen again. Complete reliance on the private sector to provide affordable and safe housing has been a disastrous failure. The State must step up and play the key role in providing homes, including via a State construction company.

Deputy Catherine Connolly

I thank Sinn Féin and Deputy Ó Broin in particular because I understand he was the special rapporteur when the housing report was produced in 2017. I will start on a positive note because it is difficult to remain positive with what we are facing with regard to the cost, negligence and failure of successive Governments. I welcome the Government's commitment to having interim reports, bringing a memo in advance of the recess next week and providing retrospective redress. I welcome all of that.

I heard a Labour Party colleague talk about our not wanting a political squabble. It is extremely important not to reduce this debate to a squabble and instead to look at how this happened. I welcome the people in the Gallery and throughout Ireland who are listening and waiting to see. We need urgent 100% retrospective redress.

We need it as quickly as possible. Let us put this in perspective and not in the context of a political squabble. Successive Governments have tolerated poor regulation, a failure to monitor and a failure to resource local authorities and they have given a thumbs-up to developers. I worry that we are doing exactly the same thing all over again and that we have learned nothing. I will quote from a presentation by a solicitor on that report, which was in 2017. It is now five years after that report and a year and a bit after the working report was published. I thank both groups for their work. The solicitor said, "Irish law is stacked against home owners who discover defects." She continued to say, "Irish law is unclear in a number of important respects with regard to remedies for building defects." She is a specialist construction lawyer who made her time available to the committee. At this meeting in 2017, she pointed out, "These problems are not new. The Law Reform Commission described them in 1977 and again in 1982 in a report that included the defective premises Bill." She later elaborated and pointed out that the Bill was never passed. She referred to the Law Reform Commission report of 1982, stating:

It was made in response to the suggestion made at the time that increased protection for consumers would increase the cost of houses. The Commission stated, "Economies achieved at the expense of defective building work were not in the interests of purchasers or lessees of houses."

That report was in 1982. We are now looking at a report from a working group. After its year of work, it has told us that there is no single cause of defects but that they arise due to a variety of reasons. My father worked all his life and ended up as a small builder. He was an absolute perfectionist. It makes me ill to read this part of the report, which states, "They tend to arise due to a variety of design, product, inspection, supervision and workmanship issues, occurring either in isolation or in various combinations." We find out from both reports that there has been an utter failure to inspect and regulate.

I will go back to what a Deputy from the Social Democrats said and ask what we have learned and where we are now. Can any Minister or Minister of State tell us what the Government has learned about inspection? What is the rate of inspection in each local authority? How many people are needed to ensure that this never happens again? I have heard nothing and we will spend up to €2 billion, rightly, to pay the property owners and people who have been affected in up to 100,000 apartments and duplexes, for a period from 1991 to 2013. It is now 2022. The Government is clapping itself on the back about a memo being brought to Government before Christmas. Look at that period. I have no idea if things have improved. From what I have read, they have not. I am extremely worried. I will repeat that we are once again giving the thumbs-up to developers.

Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (Deputy Peter Burke)

I welcome all the groups to the Gallery. On behalf of my colleague, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, I thank Deputies who have contributed to the debate. We can all agree that many homeowners and residents of apartments and duplexes have found themselves in a difficult, stressful position when defects arise in their buildings through no fault of their own. As the Minister stated on a number of occasions in this House, the Government is determined to grasp this nettle. We are committed to providing support to affected homeowners.

Given the personal impact of these problems on the homeowners involved, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, would like to reach a broad political consensus on these vital issues. In this regard, he has written to Opposition leaders to request their specific written input on options laid out in the report and any additional steps which they believe should be undertaken to meet this challenge. The Minister thanks those who have responded to date and encourages those who have yet to do so to submit their proposals for consideration as soon as possible. The Minister would like to see practical details included in these proposals and has requested, in particular, relevant detail on administration, implementation and costings to accompany the proposals. I acknowledge the calls for homeowners and residents who need support at the earliest opportunity.

I assure the House that the Government is committed to addressing this issue as a priority. The Government's commitment is demonstrated by the fact that one of the first actions of the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, was to establish the working group to examine defects in housing. This was an important initial step, as it was the first time that we could establish the scale of the issue. I am grateful to all members of this working group for the considerable work they undertook in a relatively short time. We can all agree that the scale of the issue is quite substantial, in that the number of apartments and duplexes constructed between 1991 and 2013 which are affected by fire safety, structural safety or water ingress defects is likely to be between 50% and 80%. This equates to between 62,500 and 100,000 apartments and duplexes which were built in this period. Given that the average cost to remediate defects is likely to be approximately €25,000 per apartment, that translates into a potential overall cost for remediation of between €1.56 billion and €2.5 billion.

It is no small task to determine how best to put in place support for affected homeowners in a fair and measured way. To this end, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, has put a number of measures in place to progress the matter. On 27 September, he brought a memo to the Government to inform it of the content of the report and the next steps that he will take. He has committed to reverting to the Government by the end of the year with specific proposals. Second, an interdepartmental and agency group has been established to consider the recommendations contained in the working group's report and to elaborate on the options for potential sources of financial support and the potential channels for deployment contained in the report. This interdepartmental group and agency has been asked to revert with proposed delivery mechanisms for the deployment of funding and to develop an options paper which will assist the Minister in developing proposals to present to the Government before the end of the year.

Third, an advisory group has been established to develop a code of practice in the context of the fire safety legislation to provide guidance to building professionals, local authority building controls services and local authority fire services. Fourth, the Department is engaging with the Housing Agency about the provision of advice on the implementation of the recommendations of the working group's report. In parallel, the Minister has corresponded with homeowner representative groups and is committed to keeping them updated on progress. The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, held his most recent meeting with the Construction Defects Alliance and Apartment Owners' Network earlier today. To ensure that he hears from as broad a range of affected homeowners as possible, the Minister is planning to host a webinar next Monday evening between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. to facilitate an exchange of views.

In light of the insurance issues that have been brought to the Minister's attention, he met Insurance Ireland to discuss the issue of defects and to advise on the steps he is planning to take. As is evident from the detail I have just outlined to the House, a considerable amount of work has been undertaken. This reflects the urgency that the Government believes is necessary to address this issue for affected homeowners. This is in the context of the finding of the working group that there is no single cause of defects. The working group concluded that defects tend to arise for a variety of design, product, inspection, supervision and workmanship issues, occurring either in isolation or various combinations. However, as recognised by the working group in its report, given that the overall potential scale and estimated cost of fixing the problem is so considerable, it would take many years to address all affected buildings. Therefore, resources and works will need to be prioritised. In this regard, it would not be appropriate for those in charge of affected buildings to delay the undertaking of any remediation works that are considered necessary for safety. Given the scale of the apartments potentially affected, the defects working group advised on the importance of planning, prioritising and adequately resourcing any programme to address defects. I know the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, will bring specific proposals to the Cabinet, followed by new legislation, interim measures and administrative processes to respond to the report of the working group and to examine defects in housing as quickly as possible.

Deputy Patricia Ryan

I begin by welcoming the people in the Gallery. I also welcome the publication of the report of the working group to examine defects in housing. It is obvious that much work has gone into its 260 pages.

The report estimates that up to 100,000 homes could be affected by building defects with a potential cost of remediation as high as €2.5 billion. There are many examples of building defects around the country and the obvious ones are mica and pyrite. We in Sinn Féin support 100% redress for the individuals and families affected.

There are many homeowners who feel the effect of the light-touch regulation hangover from the Celtic tiger. Residents in Oak Grove, Derrinturn have had to endure collapsing canopies, serious cracks and other defects in their homes. In March 2015 a fire ripped through a terrace of six homes in Millfield Manor in Newbridge, County Kildare. The timber frame construction used in the building was supposed to provide an hour-long firebreak between each home. The 90-house development was built by Barrack Construction between 2006 and 2009 and the blaze burned all six homes to the ground in less than half an hour. It was a miracle nobody was killed. The affected families were left with nothing except the clothes on their backs. A report was commissioned and only became public through a freedom of information request by an Teachta Ó Broin. Residents have described the report as a whitewash as it identified the risk was moderate. The cost of remediation of the remaining homes is estimated at €35,000 per home and this is money the residents do not have. The director of Barrack Homes, Paddy Byrne, filed for bankruptcy in Britain with debts of €100 million. The bankruptcy was extended from one year to ten years after it transpired Mr. Byrne had sought to conceal funds by transferring €500,000 to his ex-wife and another €500,000 to his niece. In 2012 Mr. Byrne formed a new company called Victoria Homes with his sister listed as director. By 2019 Victoria Homes was involved in 24 separate developments.

For too long there has been a cosy relationship with developers and no consequences for wrongdoers. This needs to stop. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. We need action. We need 100% redress. We need consequences or things will never change. If the Government is not willing to change the consequences, it is time it left office.

Deputy Brian Stanley

I welcome the people in the Public Gallery who are affected by building defects. They and homeowners across the State who are similarly impacted have been badly let down by successive Governments. Our proposal calls for support to finance a scheme for homes that require emergency works, with priority for those with the greatest fire risk and structural defects. I heard what the Minister of State said in that regard. Poor regulation and light-touch regulation by successive Governments have left tens of thousands of families and couples in a housing emergency and the State with a multi-billion euro bill.

Riverside is a flat complex in Portarlington built during the Celtic tiger period. It was scandalous. The water came straight through the walls. I witnessed it. People had mortgages for homes they could not even inhabit. That is a legacy of the Fianna Fáil, Progressive Democrats and Green Party Governments of the 1990s and 2000s. Up to 2014, a developer could self-certify a house or home was up to standard, only for homeowners to discover it was not. The so-called HomeBond scheme was not worth the paper it was written on or the money people paid for it.

In 2014, when we were trying to clean up the mess left by the Celtic tiger and the recession that followed it, I, as the Sinn Féin spokesperson on local government and planning, raised this issue with the then Minister, Phil Hogan. I told him there were flaws in the legislation he was pushing through the Dáil at that time. That legislation failed to deal effectively with the issue of self-certification. The changes that were made simply directed that the certifier would be hired by the developer, which left a clear conflict of interest. I pointed this out to Phil Hogan, who was sitting where the Minister of State is. I am pointing it out to the Minister of State eight years later.

The second aspect is that, as observed by the all-party housing committee in 2017, there remains totally inadequate insurance cover for homeowners. This must be addressed. When he was a Member of the Seanad the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, pointed out that certain insurance companies had washed their hands of it and walked away. Thousands of families still have not received any redress there. We need a truly independent certification process with certifiers employed directly by the local authorities, which is what happens in other jurisdictions. The all-party report set out clearly in 2017 that "To completely break the self-certification element that remains with S.I.9 Design Certifiers and Assigned Certifiers should be employed directly by local authorities ...". We need to deal with this. We must deal with this problem once and for all. There are already two generations of people here looking for redress. We do not want another generation to be doing the same in 20 years' time. We need to fix it now and work together on it.

Deputy Louise O'Reilly

I welcome the people in the Gallery. I understand it is not easy for them to sit here this evening and hear their homes, lives and futures debated in this way. It is important we are having this debate but it cannot be easy for them to have to listen to this. They are all very welcome, as is everyone who is watching. I commend the work of the representative groups from the Construction Defects Alliance and others. I also commend the work of my colleague, an Teachta Ó Broin.

For many years Sinn Féin has been campaigning for a redress scheme for homeowners and tenants impacted by Celtic tiger-era defects. There are tens of thousands of workers, families, renters and homeowners affected by this. The report by the Department working group found that fire safety, water ingress and structural issues are present in 80% of apartments built between 1991 and 2013. I acknowledge the work put into this report. The scale of the problem is a direct result of Government policy and light-touch regulation. Six different Governments sat during this period. They encompassed Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Party, Democratic Left, the Progressive Democrats, the Green Party and a host of Independents. All those politicians might reflect on their role in this scandal. It was not an accident that defective houses and apartments were built; it is what happens when an industry is allowed to self-regulate with the approval of the political system. This did not happen in a vacuum but with the approval of the political system. This light-touch regulation resulted in widespread shoddy practices by industry during the Celtic tiger years and led to serious building defects across the State. Homeowners and tenants impacted by building defects have been badly let down.

The scars of Government failure are to be seen across the length and breadth of my constituency, Dublin Fingal. I am not going to name the individual estates because the residents know who they are and they are already suffering enough without having their address tramped through the Dáil as well. Those impacted need to be supported. The Government has been dragging its heels on this for far too long. Homeowners and tenants are not to blame for building defects; it is not their fault. Despite this they have been left in limbo. They need certainty and reassurance. They need to be listened to and treated with respect. Our motion demands 100% redress for those impacted by building defects. It seeks to ensure any scheme to support the people affected is fair by providing interim funding for emergency works and short-term measures, such as fire wardens, in advance of full redress. It also prioritises those at greatest fire safety and structural risk and ensures the scheme includes social landlords, including local authorities and approved housing bodies. Crucially, it would ensure the scheme is an end-to-end one, rather than a grant scheme and calls on the Government to consider expanding the terms of reference to ensure it can open in early 2023. It would ensure the scheme is retrospective for those forced to pay for remediation of defects in advance of the opening of the scheme.

These measures would make a considerable difference to the people affected and ensure the scheme is fit for purpose. I am calling on all Deputies from all parties to back this motion to stand up for homeowners and tenants affected by building defects. It is not good enough for the Government to say it will not oppose this. It must support the motion. The people impacted by this are not to blame and it is long overdue that they be treated fairly. It is not enough for Deputies, especially those from the Government side, to pay lip service to supporting people impacted by these scandals. They must do the right thing and stand up when it really counts.

I particularly urge my constituency colleague, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, to stand with the people in Fingal who are affected by building defects and support this motion rather than simply not opposing it. I have spoken to many people from the constituency who are impacted by this. They have done nothing wrong. Many have put themselves into significant debt to make their homes safe or else they lie awake at night worried about how they are going to repair their unsafe homes and find money they have not got just to sleep safely in their beds at night. They are the victims of the failure of the State to regulate. They bought their homes in good faith and were let down by a failure of Government regulation. They have done nothing wrong and deserve our support. They must be allowed to put this behind them and get on with their lives in safe and secure homes.

Question put and agreed to.