Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The first thing I wish to do is pay tribute to the many campaigners throughout the country, some of whom are in the Gallery. When faced with a situation where they discover the house they bought whatever number of years ago is basically crumbling around them, people could be forgiven for collapsing into despair and thinking there is nothing they can do. We are still not where we need to be but we are at the point we are now because the campaigners did not just take that approach. Their backs were to the walls and they campaigned extremely valiantly and eloquently like, for example, those who appeared before the joint committee yesterday and those who campaign persistently in massive numbers.

I had the privilege of speaking at a massive protest numbering thousands of people outside the Custom House in Dublin last October. The determination and resilience of the people there was absolutely clear. I really want to say fair play to all of them. They have also helped to raise the plight of other people who are affected by other construction defects, which I will mention later, and have shown that if people campaign, they can actually force change on the Government. They have had an enormously positive impact in this country.

The message from the campaigners, which is part of the reason the campaign has been so effective, has always been extremely clear: 100% redress and nothing less. The profoundly strong moral argument behind it, which everybody could understand, is that this is not their fault. This is not the fault of homeowners. They had no hand, act or part to blame in terms of this situation. The responsibility lies with the quarry owners, builders, developers and successive Governments that have built a Republic of developers, quarry owners and so on as opposed to one that serves the interests of ordinary working people. I will summarise the problem and then go into some more details. The problem we have at the moment is that the Bill, as presented, is in reality really quite far from 100% redress and nothing less.

In reality, there is a nice big asterisk beside the redress. It is a road to 100% redress and then a bunch of small print which has the effect of reducing the amount of redress to significantly less than 100%, meaning that homeowners will continue to be in a crisis situation.

I will read a crucial part of the statement issued by the different campaigns from across the counties that came together. It addresses the Minister:

Minister let us be clear, so our words are not misunderstood. If this bill is not amended, we the homeowners will not support it. We will continue our campaign and protests until it is amended, until it is fit for purpose.

It does not get any clearer than that. The Minister knows these people are not joking or making empty promises. They are capable of running extremely effective campaigns. At this point, we are coming to the business end of things here. This is Second Stage and the deadline for amendments has already passed. The window for the Government and the Minister to make the right decision is quickly closing and I strongly urge the Minister, primarily for the benefit of the homeowners but also in his own interest, to do the right thing, to make sure the amount of time for Committee Stage is expanded to give the Bill appropriate consideration and to agree to the amendments that will turn this into a 100% redress, nothing less scheme, which is what is required. We can recall 2017 when the then Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government was discussing the pyrite scheme at the time. The committee recommended: "The mission statement of the Redress Scheme should be: 'Ordinary owners who purchased in good faith should not be liable for the costs of remediation caused by the incompetence, negligence or deliberate non-compliance of others'." It is very simple in terms of what should happen. There is nothing complicated about it.

Before I go into things in a little more detail, I will first make a point for anybody who is watching this debate. When Members on this side of the House call for more time for debate on Committee Stage, there is something people should be aware of regarding what happens in the Dáil. It is not just that there will not be enough time and therefore not enough exhaustion of the issues and a chance for everybody to contribute, but that we only get as far as the Committee gets with the amendments. If it has not reached one's amendments, they just fall and are gone if they are not Government's amendments. The Government's amendments automatically pass. However, I understand we do not have Government amendments. If they are Opposition amendments, they automatically disappear in a very undemocratic way. They are just defeated. We do not even get to have a vote on them, never mind having the type of exhaustive, comprehensive discussion that is clearly necessary as a result of, first, the situation the homeowners are facing and, second, the amount of money the State is, rightly, talking about spending. That is one point.

The second point in terms of going into the details, we agree with the amendments that have been tabled by Deputy Pringle and others. I believe there are 80 in total because, as the homeowners brought forward, there are 80 different mistakes and flaws in the Bill. I will highlight a few. One is the limitation in section 5 to a small number of counties. I do not see the logic of doing that. It does not make sense to do it as we do not yet have a full assessment of where the defective blocks have been used. Section 8 of the Bill limits the scheme to homes built before 2020. Again, it does not make sense, particularly in the context of the extremely worrying evidence heard by the committee last week that there may well be defective blocks still being produced as we speak. Obviously, we have to act to ensure that this is not continuing, but it means putting a time limit for when the homes would have been bought is completely inappropriate. Similarly, limiting the scheme only to owners who bought their home before 2020 is an unfair and arbitrary line.

The issue that has been highlighted and which appears to be a vital question in respect of section 12 is leaving out the cost of replacing foundations when they are affected. Again, it does not make any sense, neither from the point of view of the homeowners who are affected by mica nor from the point of view of the State. It will not make any sense for the State to spend billions of euro and to have whatever proportion it is of those euro going into building on defective foundations which will not last and the house will have to come down and it will have to be done all over again. It would be a crime for us to go through that process.

Regarding the point about garages and walls being included, these in reality will constitute a significant reduction in the amount of money that homeowners are able to get. There is a cap on the total amount of money a homeowner could get. We have the cap, but we already have had massive amounts of inflation and there will be more by the time the scheme comes into operation, so clearly it is completely inadequate.

The point regarding no penalty for downsizing has been extremely well made by the campaigners. The idea that we should disincentivise people from downsizing their house makes no sense either from a justice point of view or from an environmental point of view. We should not be putting pressure on people. If they want to rebuild the same house they currently have, they should be facilitated with 100% redress, but if they want to downsize for whatever reason, the State should fully support them in that. It means using fewer materials and having a smaller carbon footprint. That is a good thing and in no way should they be penalised for it. There are a number of other flaws, and they are being addressed in the Opposition amendments. They include arbitrary limits in grant timings and flawed methods for calculating the redress.

The features in these debates are the fundamental points. We are in a crisis situation. We have been through the pyrite issue, now we are dealing with mica and we are going to be dealing with very significant other construction defects and problems, particularly in apartments. It is all a microcosm of the failings of the Irish political system and its Government. It is a crumbling monument to all that is wrong and has been wrong with both the Irish construction sector and the political influence of that sector. It was the predecessors of the Minister and of the Government, which also include both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael down through the years and decades, who presided over a system of self-certification and extremely low levels of regulation and who just allowed shoddy work and inadequate practices to happen all over the place with, at different levels, quarry owners, builders and so forth all operating simply with the aim of maximising their profit and cutting corners at the expense of ordinary householders in the first instance and now, necessarily, the public as a whole in terms of having to pay for a redress scheme.

I draw two conclusions from that. One is that what is necessary now is 100% redress, nothing less, paid for by the State. Then the State should mercilessly pursue those who are responsible and who created this mess, with a view to maximising the amount of return to the State. If we can prove that there has been, and the homeowners certainly believe there has been, conscious awareness and knowledge of what was happening on the part of the quarry owners, for example, the quarries should be taken out of private ownership with no compensation and into public ownership, including assets and so forth. All those assets should be used to right the wrong for which they are responsible.

The second conclusion is that we would be in a much better place to deal with this situation if we had a State construction company. We need to create a State construction company both to address the housing crisis and also to be able to address rapidly the construction defects that have been discovered and will be discovered in the future. We would be able to deal with it rapidly, as opposed to being reliant on the private market and so forth.

The final point I will make is that at different phases of this campaign the tactic of divide and rule has been used by the Government or its outriders through asking people in Dublin why they should pay for people in Donegal, Clare or wherever. Various articles in newspapers and so on have suggested some injustice is being done in that regard. I say to all the people in the counties affected that the people I represent in Dublin South-West, and the vast majority of people in Dublin and throughout the country, do not share any of those attitudes. What there is from ordinary people in Dublin and everywhere else is a sentiment of solidarity, fair play and outrage at the injustice that has been perpetrated on people who have experienced the mica issue. There is also, of course, a sense of why should these people be punished for things that are no fault of theirs but are the responsibility of quarry owners, construction companies and so on? That divide and rule tactic did not work at all. There was a major upswell of support and solidarity. The extremely effective campaigning, including the stickers and posters throughout the entire country raising awareness of this issue, played a very important role in that support. The divide and rule tactic was completely ineffective.

This makes me return to the point I referenced at the start, which is that this issue has given people confidence elsewhere. I will give an example I raised last week with the Minister. In my constituency, I am now in touch with a significant group of apartment and duplex owners. These are people in a major apartment complex where significant defects have been discovered. When I spoke in the Chamber last week, I said to the Minister they were being told they needed to pay €15,000 to deal with fire defects. Since then, they have received a quantity surveyor's report that states it could cost up to €45,000 for each apartment. These people are not able to pay that. They do not have that kind of money. There is no way that will work. It simply does not work for them, yet they were presented with the threat that fire officers would shut down access to the building. However, because of the mica campaigners, they have a sense that this is not on and this is not right. Just like the people affected by mica, this is not any responsibility of theirs, they could not possibly have known this when they bought their apartments, and they should not be left with the bill. They and others, and I am aware of another apartment block in Carrickmines, for example, are coming together to say they need redress.

I support the call that has been mentioned for tax credits in respect of these schemes, but I will make the point that such credits imply people can pay upfront. Most people do not have €15,000, never mind €45,000, in the bank. That does not work. We are now seeing a situation where we are talking about tens of thousands, if not more than 100,000, apartments in particular that were built during the Celtic tiger period, whose owners are victims of self-certification, poor regulation and shoddy building practices, exactly like those issues experienced by homeowners affected by mica. The idea these people will be able to pay upfront to deal with this is not going to work. Simply put, we will need a redress scheme, as we had for those affected by pyrite, and we absolutely had to have for those similarly affected by mica, for apartment and duplex owners affected by the shoddy construction that happened during the Celtic tiger, in particular the fire defects.

I understand the working group was due to report by the end of June, which is today. I suspect it will be another couple of weeks before it completes its report. If a tax credit is included in the budget, it is much better than nothing but it will not be enough. We are now seeing a major problem, partly as a consequence of mica and people becoming aware of it, but also due to fire inspections and so on that are being done. The same basic principle applies: it is no fault whatsoever of the homeowners. They were victims of the construction industry, the Government and the State, which poorly regulated that industry, and the State, therefore, needs to step in. We need to have redress schemes. We then need to pursue those responsible for the situation we are currently in.

I am putting the Minister on notice that, unfortunately, this will not be the last redress scheme that will be needed. I strongly encourage him to take on board the points being made and the position of the mica campaigners. I ask him to agree to the extension of the debate on Committee Stage to make sure we get to hear all the amendments and, most important, that he accepts the amendments and agrees to a genuine, 100% redress scheme and nothing less because it is what is necessary for the homeowners.

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