Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome that the Bill is finally being brought before Dáil Éireann. It is clearly a step in the right direction. Very few of us can imagine what it must be like for those who have been in the situation that affects homeowners in Clare, Mayo, Donegal and other parts of the State. These people are struggling to pay mortgages. Everyone is struggling to pay their mortgage and it is going to get worse next winter. Imagine having that home crumble around you and wonder whether you have any comeback. Where and how does such a homeowner come back? A person would need the wherewithal, the financial reserves and mental reserves to take on one of the biggest companies in the country, a company with huge tentacles around the world, including into the political elite of Ireland. For the affected homeowners, feeling that they are very much left on their own must be truly horrendous from a mental health perspective. I am glad that the scheme is finally being published and I welcome that. However, facets of the scheme and the Bill concern me.

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It particularly concerns me that now that we finally have a Bill, we will ram it through. That is what we are going to do next Thursday. There is discussion of it today which, to be fair to the Minister, is quite long so we can discuss the generalities at length today. When it comes down to the specifics, however, we will ram it through next Thursday. That creates a suspicion in my mind. Why allow so much time for the generalities but such little time to go through the specifics? Is it because it does not add up or because there are inconsistencies? Is it because we do not want to focus on those issues? We are stuck for time at the end of the Dáil session and we always are because we have statements on this, that and the other and statements on general irrelevance, with the benefit of hindsight, during the year and then we ram all the legislation through in a fortnight. Here we are again. Poor old Michael D. Higgins will be up at night, burning the midnight oil and his candle, trying to read the legislation and get through it in time to meet the constitutional requirement of signing it in time. He did complain about it before. However, like anyone's concerns about what this Government does, it fell on deaf ears.

I raised an issue at the committee last week. I disagree respectfully with the previous speaker, with whom I am in a technical group. It is important to save money. It is very important that people are bailed out and that they are put in a position they would be in, had their home not been defective and had they not been sold defective blocks. That is hugely important and should be the first priority, which I completely accept. I do not think this scheme will do that, unfortunately. However, the second priority must be to do so in a manner that is as cheap as possible for the general taxpayers, given the multiple and competing demands. Last night we had a great deal of discussion on what those demands are and will be into the future. It is not as important as putting people back in the position they would be in had they not been sold defective concrete blocks but the next priority for me has to be saving money. I have many concerns in that regard about this scheme.

Downsizing is not allowed. If the money people get from the State does not meet the cost of rebuilding their house and if instead of building, say, a 250 sq. m house, they build a 150 sq. m house because that is all the money they are being given, they will be penalised for doing that. I do not understand that. I understand the priority of saving money but not that. People may not have the money or may be of an age where they cannot remortgage if they are in their 60s. I know of people in County Clare who are retired, who had paid off their mortgage over their lives, in service to the State, and who were looking forward to their retirement. Now they find that their home is crumbling around them and they will not get the full cost of it. They are not in a position to raise a mortgage but now the Government is telling them they cannot downsize. I ask the Minister to consider that. The relevant provision is to be found in section 17(5) of the Bill, on page 23, lines 6 to 14.

Then there is the issue of subrogation. That means that once the Minister pays out money, say, for example, €150,000, the Minister has a call on anyone's claim. I have no problem with that as an idea but I believe the way it is drafted will ensure that the only people who will pay for any of this is the Exchequer and that those who manufactured defective concrete blocks for large amounts of profit, big companies making large amounts of money, will be let off the hook by this and the poor Irish Exchequer with all the competing demands on it will be put wholly on the line because of the subrogation clause. If someone's claim is for €250,000 and the first €150,000 will go to the Minister then why would anyone sue? The first thing that anyone in a civil case will do is make an offer if there is any sort of reasonable case. If someone was looking for €250,000 he or she will be offered €150,000 and would be well advised to take that because no matter how good a case is, there are always weaknesses. There is absolutely no incentive after the scheme is in place for the homeowners to initiate cases.

As for the Minister, if the Minister has a right of action which accrues to him on the payment of the money, he may exercise it. It is a general aspiration. I would like to beef that up in a way that does not cost the State money. In an amendment I have drafted, I do not say that the Minister shall pursue every cause of action but that the Minister shall give a report in respect of every payment made on how many cases he took after two years and every year thereafter for ten years. It would keep it in focus. That report would be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas because they are ultimately responsible for public expenditure and we are talking about more than €2 billion, which is generally accepted as being €3 billion and with inflation going as it is, it will be an awful lot more. I am not happy to sign a blank cheque on this without knowing that the Minister will at least seek to recover some money from those who manufactured defective concrete blocks for profit and made a huge amount of profit with directors' bonuses and the whole shebang and not have the Exchequer being the only entity paying for the huge damage that they caused. Moreover, we will not fully pay for that damage, as has been much elucidated in this Chamber. I would like if we were paying more and if it was 100% of the cost to the poor householders who are the victims here but we are not. To the extent that we are paying anything, I would like to know that the expenditure for that will not have to compete with the expenditure for childcare, for the hospital in Limerick, education, health, social welfare and for all the competing demands on the Exchequer while the big companies, the CRHs of this world, the listed companies, walk away scot-free and can smile to themselves while thinking, "Jesus, that was some get-out-of-jail-free card that the Dáil signed" because the Government rammed it through just because the lads were thinking about their holidays and did not really look at it. Because that is what is going to happen, I have no doubt about that. I ask that the Minster at least examine the amendments. Even if he is going to ram the Bill through, will he do me and the constituents that every Deputy here represents, namely, Deputies Alan Farrell, McHugh, Pringle, Mac Lochlainn, Ó Broin and Doherty, as well as my independent colleague from the mid-west, Deputy O'Donoghue, the courtesy of at least looking at our amendments? It is not that much to expect.

I also propose that the Minister will notify someone if he is going to take a case based on the person's cause of action that has vested in the Minister. The reason is that such people might take a piggy-back case on the back of it. If they will only get 80% of the cost of it and that will go to the Minister, they might at least be in a position to take a case at the same time to reduce costs and increase their chances of success and of being able to persuade somebody to take a case. They could take a case for the other 20%, if the Minister is going to do so. The Minister would notify the Oireachtas of how many cases he is taking - at the moment it will be shrouded in secrecy - and give reasons for the case. There may be cases where the Chief State Solicitor advises that we will not have a high likelihood of success and so be it, but at least we should make sure that every case is looked at and that we try to get back as much money from these companies as possible, rather than just throwing our hands up and exposing the Exchequer to a huge amount of money one more time, something we in this House do once a decade, and then shuffling around wondering how did that happen. It happens because people rush legislation through without sufficient analysis.

I have also put down an amendment specifying when a cause of action accrues or when the time runs from. I propose that in cases which have not yet been taken, that there is a cause of action once there is a report that says someone has defective concrete blocks. It is for a report as defined in the Bill or a report from a competent engineer. Lots of people have cracking in their houses and their houses have been cracking for five or six years. They did not know why. Are they to be penalised because they did not immediately think of something that nobody knew anything about and because they did not think it was pyrite and now the time is gone to take a case? Ought they to have known then it was pyrite? How many people knew about pyrite six years ago if there was cracking in their house? How were they supposed to take a case then? Are they to be met with a defence that they ought to have known their house had pyrite and that had they met a leading world expert from Switzerland down at the local, the expert would have said they had pyrite, because we in the defence had access to that level of expertise? By "we" I mean the CRHs of this world. My amendment proposes that the cause of action accrues from when a homeowner has a report confirming that it is pyrite. That is not unreasonable. There is a logic to it and that is what the Minister is looking for in order to bail people out. He is looking for a report, a "building condition assessment report" as defined in the Bill or an engineer's report. That is where a person's cause of action runs from.

Every case is limited in time and the homeowner must act quickly. That time is frozen. The precedent for that is the Civil Liability Act. The time is frozen from when the right vests in the Minister until he notifies the homeowner as to whether he will take a case. It enables people to take cases. It gives individuals and the Exchequer a reasonable chance of recovering some of the astronomical costs so that those who caused this problem will not walk away scot-free, smirking in their rear-view mirror as the Exchequer picks up the bill one more time.

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