Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses to the meeting today. From a County Clare perspective, it has been very frustrating. Whereas people from counties Donegal and Mayo have had more than two years of at least informal negotiation with the Department of Housing Local Government and Heritage and officials, the first negotiation with residents of County Clare took place on Monday of last week. Earlier, Dr. Martina Cleary was restricted to a time limit of six minutes in delivering her opening statement. I respect the fact that there are time constraints at committee meetings, but it is wrong for the issue to be condensed into six minutes, given the extent of the problem County Clare and length of the campaign to get here, which has been a two-year journey. Cracks and crumbling blocks are just a physical manifestation of the problem. The damage that has been done to the county and to the mental health of many homeowners is extensive. My colleagues and I can account for the fact that the health of homeowners has deteriorated significantly over the past year and a half, as they have faced the unknown.

I will get straight to the questions. I.S. 465:2018 is the benchmark test for getting one onto a redress scheme. Over the past 12 months in County Clare we have seen that there are flaws within the testing model itself. Five samples that Dr. Clearly, Mr. Simon Beale and I believed to confirm the presence of pyrite were sent off to a laboratory in England. Weeks later the result came back stating that there was insufficient proof. It struck me that samples were being taken from walls on the good side of a house.

To use a medical analogy, it was akin to checking a patient for a suspected brain tumour but taking a tissue sample from the big toe. They were taking the sample from the opposite end, not getting the crumbling bag of dust that they wanted and they said there was no pyrite present. Are the witnesses worried that if we stick with the current IS 465 testing of core samples, we will end up with more houses not getting near the damage threshold or any entry threshold whatever?