Mr. John O'Connor:

I thank the Chairman. In the four minutes I will give an overview of the pyrite remediation scheme and the land aggregation scheme.

I will first give a quick overview of the pyrite remediation scheme. Pyrite is a mineral that is found in rock and it affects the hard core. If we take the floor of this committee room, it would be the stone underneath the floor. It expands and starts pushing up the floor, which causes damage to the floor and begins to cause cracks in the walls. The damage can be very significant. It causes many cracks in the walls of houses of a structural nature and the floors start to be pushed up, which is very distressing for homeowners.

The pyrite remediation scheme applies to certain parts where pyritic heave is being caused. The majority of cases where we have remediated houses have been in Fingal County Council and Meath. They account for 90% of all the houses remediated.

To be eligible for one's house to be remediated, it has to be damaged to a certain level. It is called a damage condition rating of 2 and it has to be as a result of pyritic heave. The work we have to carry out in a house is very intrusive. On the screen are some pictures of that. We have to dig out the entire ground floor slab, take out all the stone underneath the ground floor slab, put the stone back in and the floor back down. We then finish the house in that we put back the floor finishes and paint the walls so the ground floor of the house is handed back to homeowners in show house condition. To date, we have remediated 2,029 homes and handed them back to homeowners. That is an overview of the pyrite remediation scheme.

I will give a quick overview of the land aggregation scheme. Arrangements were put in place to clear the loans for 73 sites and they have been transferred to the Housing Agency. There are 247 ha in total. That is 600 acres around the country. The diagram shows where the sites are located across the country. As I said, 73 sites in all were transferred and every number of years we do a strategic plan in respect of those sites, in conjunction with the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, in terms of plans to develop those sites.

I will give the members some examples of what has been done with the sites. The first one is in Portlaoise town. It is a development of 33 houses provided for social housing by Laois County Council. On the slide is another example of a social housing development. It is the largest social housing development in Galway city, on the Ballymoneen Road, which is being done. Phase 1 is complete and phase 2 is under construction. Another example is in Craddockstown, Naas, which is part of a wider bundle under a public private partnership, PPP, project undertaken by the National Development Finance Agency, in conjunction with local authorities. All of those are for social housing. Other parts of that site we will use for other purposes. The slide shows another one in Stepaside, Dublin. It is a development of 155 homes done in conjunction with Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, Respond and two housing associations. There will be 105 for social housing and 50 for cost rental. That development will be completed next year.

Some sites are more appropriate for mixed use. The site on the screen is in Fermoy where a school has been constructed on half of the site. We have transferred that to the Department of Education. On the other part of the site housing has been completed by the Respond housing association, again for social housing.

The last example is the Devoy lands in Naas, which are beside the Kildare County Council offices. Part of that land is being used for an enterprise building for start-up businesses.

This is for start-up businesses being built by Kildare County Council. Part of the site will be used for housing development. The Housing Agency is working with the Land Development Agency to develop that for over 200 houses and apartments. They will all be either for social or affordable housing.

At a very high level, in terms of any lands under the land aggregation scheme to date the plans are to use it for public purposes for social housing, affordable housing and other public purposes. In terms of the remit, everything has to be sanctioned by the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage. The focus has been on using it for social housing, affordable housing and for all our public uses. That is a very quick overview.