Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 23 June 2022
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government
Remediation of Dwellings Damaged by the Use of Defective Concrete Blocks Bill 2022: Discussion
Dr. Martina Cleary:
Absolutely. We did not have a grant and some engineers - some IS 465 and some not - were telling Clare homeowners to cover the cracks, rake them out, fill them in or keep paint on them. There were a variety of different solutions to keep water ingress or rain out. We had no other option to try to preserve our homes. There was no grant so we were left in rotting homes trying to mend them and fix them.
If this is a visual inspection only, somebody may say there is no cracking visible. There are examples in the report I provided of homeowners and Clare County Council testing of the absolute danger these people are living with beneath a cosmetic sheen of plastic paint. There is really only a cosmetic fix and there must be core testing because it is the only way we can truly see what is underneath the render.
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