Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

I thank Deputy Finneran for taking the Adjournment debate. I would obviously prefer to have the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Gormley, in the House to address the matter.

For almost a year, I have been asking the Minister, Deputy Gormley, to take command of a major investigation and process of remediation and compensation for residential and infrastructural projects which have been badly damaged by defective infill materials with too high a concentration of the mineral pyrite. A few weeks after the Government came to office, I first learned of the distress of householders in the Drynam Hall estate in Kinsealy where floors, walls and ceilings were cracking. A circular on the problem had been sent around by the Drynam Hall developers, Mennolly Homes.

A few months later I was informed that the problem also existed in The Coast and Clongriffin developments in the huge new north-fringe urban region in my constituency. Other reports located the pyrite problem in the vast Castlecurragh estate in west Dublin and indicated that a significant number of developers had contacted the suppliers, Homebond, regarding their fears about the matter. Lately, I have heard allegations from the construction industry that at least 60,000 residential units built during 2001-2002 may be infected by the disastrous pyrite infill. Equally alarmingly, there are continuing allegations that a number of large infrastructural developments, including urban regeneration projects, are contaminated by pyrites.

Pyrites is an iron sulphide popularly known as "fool's gold". It reacts with oxygen and water to form sulphuric acid and expands with devastating consequences for buildings if exposed to air or water.

This unfolding crisis is exacerbated by the serious downturn in the construction industry. In the middle of it all stands the Minister, Deputy John Gormley, who has washed his hands of any responsibility for the disaster. It was his Department, however, that permitted complete self-regulation of building standards in the construction industry. In earlier replies the Minister has referred me to a pathetic circular on building standards which he sent out to the local authorities last autumn. It requests them to implement the Building Control Act 1990 and consult the National Standards Authority of Ireland amendment to SR 21 on building aggregates. The Minister, Deputy Gormley, has shirked his responsibility to thousands of householders, perhaps tens of thousands, who have entered negative equity by his failure to act. In more general terms, he has failed the State because of possible damage to very costly infrastructural developments.

Why has the Minister not yet ordered a full traceability audit of the 2 million tonnes or so of infill from the affected quarry owned by the Irish Asphalt division of the Lagan Group? Only 100,000 tonnes, or 5%, of this aggregate has been accounted for so far, in terms of location. Is the Minister terrified of the possible results of a thorough investigation of the Lagan Group's operations at this quarry? Can he confirm if the quarry is still open? Why has he not directed Fingal County Manager, Mr. David O'Connor, to close the facility immediately? Why has the Minister not ordered a thorough investigation of the other quarries in Leinster that are also allegedly damaged by high pyrite concentrations? Why has he not examined the wider operations of the Lagan Group and similar suppliers of quarry concentrates?

Young householders were left to fend for themselves while a company called Killoe Developments failed to respond to their desperate anxieties about their mortgage investments. Why did the Minister stand helplessly on the sidelines?

The pyrites infill disaster is not the first infill calamity of its kind in the world. The Minister might have followed the example of the Mennolly Homes developers and looked to the experience of the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec with regard to this problem. Yet the Minister, Deputy Gormley, has consistently refused to establish a national pyrite investigation and monitoring agency along the lines of the Quebecois example or even to issue an information document for the benefit of homeowners and consumers such as the Canadian document "Pyrite and Your Home".

Why will the Minister, Deputy Gormley, not immediately implement a protocol for compulsory chemical analysis of all construction infill? Why has the Minister not asked the Taoiseach and the Cabinet to consider appropriate compensation mechanisms for affected householders and public bodies? Even at this late stage, will the Minister call on the Dublin City Manager, Mr. John Tierney, and Fingal County Manager, Mr. David O'Connor, and establish a task force to investigate and address all aspects of this appalling affair? Is the Minister, Deputy Gormley, aware that UK media outlets are inquiring if the Lagan Group is considering off-loading and selling quarries in the State and in the North? The Irish media is running scared of this important story.

The Minister, Deputy Gormley's response to this shocking development during the construction boom of the Celtic tiger is completely unacceptable and must change immediately. I am deeply disappointed that a Green Party colleague from the first rainbow coalition on Dublin City Council, which I led, should be so lethargic and uncaring to perhaps tens of thousands of our fellow citizens unwittingly caught up in this disaster. If the full dimensions of the pyrites infill problem turn out to be as feared and alleged by sources in the construction sector, the Minister, Deputy Gormley's days in the Department are surely numbered and the local authorities and the State will be left with a possible liability of tens of billions of euro.

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