Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the witnesses for attending and for their opening statements.

I can hear the frustration in their voices, and we understand how frustrating it is to have to come back here over and over again. However, it is also important that other people in this building hear that things not only have not got better but, in some sense from the testimony given at the start, have actually got worse. The witnesses should not think these are wasted opportunities. They are genuinely valuable, at least for those of us paying attention. I wish those Deputies who voted for this scheme when it was rushed through the Oireachtas - there are no such Deputies currently in this room - were here to listen to what has been said. The witnesses and this committee were told that legislation and the regulations would fix the problems the witnesses told our committee about previously that existed with the original scheme, either for counties Donegal or Mayo or for those counties not included. What is quite troubling is that not only are all those issues that were raised still being raised but it seems that solving them is even more difficult. One of the most troubling things about the new scheme is that I asked the Minister earlier this year how many new applicants had applied for the scheme. The numbers are genuinely concerning in that, in Mayo, at the time the question was answered, there were only nine new applications. That was six months into the scheme that was meant to fix the problems with the old one. In Donegal, there were only 160 applications, barely one tenth of what was in the other scheme. While Clare and Limerick have 49 and 18 applications, as Dr. Cleary has said, many of those applicants were early movers who could have been progressed earlier and were not.

Beyond what the witnesses have already said, what is dissuading the people they are talking to in their counties from applying? What are the big ticket items that mean people who live in defective homes are not applying? They have outlined the problems with people in the system trying to get resolution. That is my first question.

We obviously have to be careful because of privilege and rules of the House when it comes to naming people, but I am taken by what Dr. Cleary has said about conflicts of interest. I invite her to write to our committee in brief form setting out those concerns more explicitly than she can in an open session because of the rules. This committee needs to consider those matters and to put those questions to the NSAI and the Department either in writing or when they are in front of this committee. Without asking Dr. Cleary to undertake more work, perhaps she could set that out more explicitly in written form. If there are conflicts of interest at the heart of the review of the standard underpinning the scheme, that is a very big issue which our committee has an obligation to responsibly work its way through. I give her a commitment that if she writes to the committee, I will endeavour to get it to do the right thing.

I have other questions, but starting with Mayo followed by Clare and Donegal, what is stopping people applying for the scheme they were told would resolve the problems of the earlier scheme?