Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is the difficulty. This meeting is not just about what is going to happen in the next couple of weeks or months; it is about the damage that has been done over the past ten years. I would like us to take two steps today. First, we must ensure that a strong message about where the pressure points lie is sent to the Department. Second, Mr. Hayes made an important intervention about getting all of the stakeholders around the table. Looking back over my participation on this journey, the big thing that has been lacking is communication. That is not the witnesses’s fault, but the fault of the overall apparatus. The homeowners’ voices have been lost in this, leaving them feeling paralysed, left out and let down, which leads to anger, anguish and a trauma – there is no other word that can be used – that still exists.

I met a couple of people today who were living in Dublin. This is not to say anything against Dublin, but they asked me how the situation in Donegal was and said that the mica issue seemed to have been sorted. The witnesses know it is not sorted. As public representatives, we know it is not sorted. Just because it is not as evident as it was during the big campaigns in Dublin-----