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

I have never accepted the argument about the independence of NAMA. The mandate of NAMA was set by Government and by legislation and Government can change that mandate. On other matters, I long thought it should change that mandate but this issue is a very big one and everybody acknowledges that. It is not certain precisely how we would go about giving redress to people; it could be through tax credits for example. I am more for direct expenditure than tax credits. It still merits making a report and that is why I support what Deputy Nash is trying to do with this amendment. We need to examine very quickly how we will ensure that there is 100% redress for people who have dangerous fire defects to their homes, water ingress problems and other structural building defects which will cost a lot to remediate. We must do this to prevent people from failing to get insurance at all or from having to pay extortionate insurance premiums. It would also pose serious difficulties for people being able to sell the homes they have paid for. These are serious issues that are blighting the lives of a lot of people. There are a lot of people who do not know they have these issues but who will find out at some point. We should start to go out proactively and find these places and find out where else is likely to be affected. I suspect the numbers will be pretty staggering when we find out because these builders were let run riot during a certain period in this country.

Where NAMA is involved there should be a specific Government mandating of it to ensure that NAMA or anybody acting on behalf of it has specific instructions on the way they behave and what they are trying to do. In his answer the Minister said that NAMA has to obtain the best achievable financial return from its acquired assets. That is one of the phrases he used in his response to me. I hope that is not interpreted by NAMA as absolving it from putting money into ensuring that the places from which it is trying to get a return are safe, that it does not want to pay the costs of making them safe because it would eat into its ability to get the best financial return. That would be outrageous if that were the case. In the same way we charged NAMA - not enough but to some degree - with ensuring a certain amount of social and affordable housing would be delivered. We said that notwithstanding NAMA's overall imperative to get a good financial return we wanted it to identify a certain amount of social housing. That was part of its mandate. It should be part of its mandate to ensure the proper treatment of people where they have acquired properties and are in this situation. Those people should be treated properly and NAMA should be responsible for the remediation necessary of those houses.

The Minister may have an update, which is very recent because some of the things he said were not in the previous reply. I take that on board but it would be highly surprising to me if the remediation the Minister suggested is full-scale remediation of the building defects because there would be no court case if that was the case. The reason the residents were not willing to sign some sort of release that NAMA's receivers were looking for them to sign is because that was their only leverage on NAMA to finance the remediation of the defects in their buildings. That is why there is a court case. They were holding out on financing the remediation, even though, and this is where the inconsistency comes in, in other neighbouring estates close by, for some reason there had been remediation and it had been financed. Why they were holding out in this case I do not know. Perhaps it is inconsistency between the receivers but that should not be allowed to happen.

I ask the Minister to look into this a bit more and to look into it with NAMA to see what can be done to make sure these residents are not being put through the ringer or forced into court unnecessarily. I ask that NAMA would have an overall approach of saying that if it has acquired a property or the loans attached to it then it will make sure that remediation is done and paid for and that the residents are not put on the hook for it.