Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Exactly. I understand from my colleagues there may be ten minutes left in that Bill so we may get caught again. I wish to finish the point I was making. From my experience and what I have seen, I hope that an accident does not come to pass but I fear it will. People should not be living in some of the homes in which they are living at present. Imagine standing in a kitchen with water ingress near the sockets, microwave and all the rest where there are live wires of 220 V. It is a danger. The buildings are condemned and yet families are still living in them. I know this is a wee bit off the subject. Others are concerned about high winds in winters in that chimneys might fall.

I am taking the opportunity to try to explain it to the Minister but I am probably not doing a very good job. Why are some families in Donegal in a situation and homes in which they should not be? I can only speak for the ones I have seen. They should not be in these homes. It is very challenging. I spoke to one person in a home of this nature whose application is stalled with the local authority. You can crumble the bricks in your fingers. It is unbelievable.

I say it in this context because we are dealing with the aftermath, a large remediation and a scheme that still has not been published. People feel let down because of this. Legislation was rushed through. The campaigners did not want the legislation to be rushed through. We were told it needed through before the summer because the scheme was coming out and there is still no scheme. People feel hurt and they are in a dangerous scenario. Please God, the worst will not come to pass. However, some of these buildings are structurally unsound, a fire hazard and a death trap and families are living in them as we speak. There is no avenue for them to deal with this because the scheme does not exist. The old scheme is stalled.

Ms Lisa Hone, chairperson of the Mica Action Group, appeared before the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach. She talked about the inaction of Government in this regard. The Minister talked about how the Government committed a certain amount of money, which is a large amount of money the State and taxpayers must spend to clean up the mess of what was really a Fianna Fáil era of no regulation. Many of those people are still in those houses, however. They are still in those scenarios. They still do not have scheme that works for them or where they can rebuild their homes and houses. What they have seen in this Finance Bill, however, is a measure that will now make it more costly for them to rebuild their homes.

The Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland told us what the costs are for a three-bedroom house. I know the Minister will dispute this cost, but we also dug deep into the Department's own costing for which inflation has not been taken into account. The Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland said it is approximately €1,200 of an additional cost. The mica victims talk about the injustice of this measure being brought forward that makes it harder for them to rebuild their homes. They know that under what is being proposed, many of them will not be able to rebuild their homes anyway because there is such a gap in terms of the support or grant aid that will be available and what they would have to pay themselves.

I made the point earlier that I believe the banking levy needs to be increased at least back to where it was prior to now. The Minister said there will be a review in that regard. That is the best way of actually funding this. This measure brings in €32 million. Indeed, bringing the banking levy back up to where it was would bring in double that. It will not pay for the scheme but it would be a contribution towards the overall cost.

There are obviously other issues, one of which, as we touched on so many times during the Finance Bill debate, is the cost of housing. We can see it in the Central Statistics Office, CSO, figures published today in terms of residential house prices going up and up. It was 10% in the last year and higher in certain areas. It is all going in the wrong direction. We heard from the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland that the tender price index is running at approximately 14% for inflation. We know that the prices of certain materials has increased. The price of concrete, for example, has risen by 37% in the last year. The trajectory of that will go up further because of the fuel-intensive nature of its production. It is expected that concrete will rise in price again possibly before the end of the year, as we heard from the Construction Industry Federation, and possibly again. It has already gone up by 37%, however. This levy is putting the price up further again, which will be passed on to individuals. The feeling is that this is not being applied to those who are culpable because it will be passed on to the consumer. There is an argument that any levy, no matter what, will be passed on to the consumer, although I would argue that a levy on profits is harder to pass on to the consumer compared with a levy on the product the consumer purchases.

We heard from Mr. Barra Roantree of the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, who spoke about the burden of the proposed levy on concrete blocks and similar products. I will quote from a newspaper article regarding his briefing, which states:

The burden was 'likely to fall on the residents of newly built homes rather than on industry' whose negligence led to the defects with mica, pyrite and other issues. He said the cost would ultimately fall on buyers of new homes or on tenants, if the homes were let out by landlords who had shouldered the cost in the price of the house. It is not clear why these people should fund mica redress. It is a big one-off cost. We have big one-off corporation tax revenues. They seem to match.

There is a lot of logic to that instead of asking those individuals or pushing the prices of housing up further. It is important that when we look at tax changes or revenue-raising measures, we should at all costs not undermine the delivery and affordability of housing. This is what this measure does. It is not just me saying this. The Construction Industry Federation is saying it. The Minister could argue that it would say that anyway, but the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, SCBI, said it as well and the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland is very clear in this regard.

There are significant concerns that increasing costs are threatening the viability of planned developments. I mentioned to the Minister previously that we are already seeing commencements going in the wrong direction with anything between a 15% and 20% reduction now compared with where they were in recent months. We know that high inflation is impacting negatively on construction input costs and, therefore, on every sector right across Ireland. I know this from my experience of talking to people and dealing with suppliers of kitchens or bathroom furnishings and so forth. They tell me that in terms of self-builds, the trend is to get the house closed up and then just leave it for a while because prices have gone out of control. We hear that the pipeline of activity in Dublin is not looking great. There is a bit of concern regarding what is happening. In all of this, we need to be driving down costs. That is the key issue.

The Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland relayed that "the National SCSI Tender Price Index is running at 14% inflation for commercial construction and the largest contributor to tender inflation over the past 12 months is material prices." It went on to state that "rising energy costs have had a significant impact on energy-intensive materials" such as metal, steel, aluminium, copper, cement, curtain walling and so on. As I said, we have seen concrete increase in price by 37% in the last year.