Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman and the secretariat for organising this meeting. I am substituting for Deputy Flaherty. I thank all of the homeowners who are here today, the committees that are behind them and all of the other homeowners behind those committees. For the benefit of anyone who has not dealt with this issue and is new to it, the mental stress everybody here and everybody they represent are under is absolutely extraordinary. You really cannot understand it until you are in the middle of it. That needs to be at the forefront of everyone's mind.

I will come back to the damage threshold and the issue of the foundations. Deputy Conway-Walsh referred earlier to Mayo County Council turning down 20 applications last summer. Some 19 of these rejections were overturned on appeal. That is relevant because the expert group's report cited Mayo County Council's work on a damage threshold as one of the reasons a damage threshold is being introduced. Will Ms Hegarty comment on what was involved in that? She was one of the homeowners in question.

With regard to the foundations issue, I know Mr. Campbell has made some proposals as to a potential solution. Will he talk us through those proposals? Will he also explain the difference between raft and strip foundations and the relevance of that difference to what is under discussion today?