Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I would say the Department of Finance has a very particular responsibility to the residents and owners of apartment complexes that have fire or other building defects, and where the costs they potentially face are very significant indeed. They bear no responsibility whatsoever for the costs and defects affecting the apartments. Why do I say that? Previous Ministers for Finance - I acknowledge that it was before the time of the Minister, Deputy Donohoe - had given very significant tax breaks and tax incentives to encourage the property madness that was the Celtic tiger. One feature of that gold rush to make money in property was the abandoning of proper standards and building controls. Consequently, it is a fair assessment to say that almost anything that was built in the Celtic tiger period, not just multi-unit but especially multi-unit complexes and big estates, are very likely to be suffering from fire defects, lack of proper fire breaks between apartments in multi-unit complexes and between houses, other structural defects and failures to apply proper building control standards. I would say we are talking about tens of thousands of units, and many of the people affected do not even know. All of the property incentives put in place by previous Ministers for Finance were very much part of that . In this regard, I believe that the Department has a particular responsibility to assist the people affected by all of this.

Just like the families affected by the mica issue, who are asking for 100% redress by the State for damage to their homes that was not their fault, all those affected by failures to put in proper fire breaksand implement proper building fire controls, and by other building defects affecting their homes, should get redress. The responsibility of the Department of Finance also goes beyond that, certainly in respect of one case that I have raised with the Minister. Indeed, I suspect there may be quite possibly more, because many of the residential developments - estates or multiunit complexes - that are likely to be or known to be affected by these building defects may have been handed over to NAMA, which is a creature of the Department of Finance.

Carrickmines Green is one such example of that. Indeed I have submitted questions to the Minister on it and I have raised the issue in the Dáil on a number of occasions. At the end of this month NAMA is taking the residents and owners of Carrickmines Green to court because they do not want to sign documents or leases. The Department should be aware of the details I have submitted. I do not expect the Minister to know all the details now. NAMA is trying to put pressure on these owners and residents in Carrickmines Green who cannot sell their homes. They cannot get insurance or it costs an absolute fortune to get insurance. The cost has gone up exponentially because there are not proper fire breaks in the whole place. They are living in an unsafe building, but it has been taken over by NAMA's receivers and the receivers are now taking them to court because the receivers want the right to sell some of the units, even though they have not been remediated. NAMA's receivers will not remediate the people still living there and will not pay for the remediation to put in the fire breaks. They expect the residents and owners to do it, but they also want to put pressure on the same people to sign documents so that the receivers can sell other units which also have not been remediated. It is very questionable, to my mind, among other things. There is a slight caveat in that the details of this are complex, but I have submitted them. The residents' appeal to the Minister, very specifically in this regard, is to tell NAMA to tell its receivers to stop treating people who have building defects in their homes, through no fault of their own, in this scandalous fashion. It is outrageous. It is particularly outrageous because in other developments where NAMA was in some way involved, remediation was paid for. There is not even consistency in this regard. It is very shoddy treatment. I suspect the Minister is going to tell me that NAMA has its own mandate, it is not up to him and the receivers are acting on behalf of NAMA. I do not really accept that. I had many problems, from the beginning, with NAMA's mandate. NAMA is a creature of the Department of Finance. It seems to be that there should be intervention from the Minister for Finance with NAMA to say that it must treat these people properly. If receivers are involved, NAMA effectively therefore owns these places, and it should remediate. It should not be putting pressure and bullying the residents and owners in this way. It should be offering remediation.

I want to put that to the Minister as well as generally supporting Deputy Nash's proposal for a report in this area, which in my opinion should lead to a position of 100% redress for all those affected. It is a matter of urgency because, of course, there are many people out there who probably do not even know that the places they are living in are not safe. Some of them have discovered that. There was a very nice man who passed away a few years ago called Noel Manning. He was a fire expert. I remember him taking me to an estate on the north side of Dublin, which I will not name here. He had arranged with some of the people who lived out there to show me the defects. He was trying to blow the whistle at the time on the extent of defects in estates, from a fire safety point of view. The defects were not just in this estate; he had seen them everywhere and he was trying to blow the whistle. I raised some of the issues in the Dáil over the years. He said this stuff was rampant. In everything that was being built during this period, there were no proper fire breaks, the standards were inadequate, and the standards were not, in any event, applied. It was just absolute cowboy stuff. There was a gold rush to build stuff as quickly as possible regardless of proper standards. If they have not already discovered it, there are a lot of people out there who will discover that they are facing very big bills as a result of all this. I support Deputy Nash's proposal, but I also have a specific ask that the Department of Finance should see its responsibility for the reasons I have outlined. I also ask that it intervenes with NAMA, where it has involvement in this through ownership of estates or anything it has in its hands, or where receivers are acting on its behalf, to insist that it should not be treating people in this way. It certainly should not be taking them to court. It should be financing the remediation of these people's homes.