Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

I say the Taoiseach is aware because one year ago he visited homes affected by pyrite in County Meath along with the now Minister of State, Deputy McEntee. In a statement with the big headline, "Enda Kenny Visits Pyrite Infected Houses in Meath", the Taoiseach stated:

I am shocked at the level of destruction I have seen. These are people's homes and it is an outrage that the current government is washing their hands of this issue.

It was an outrage from the Fianna Fáil dominated Government, whose lax regulation allowed builders to use this material despite its destructive capacity being known. One survey suggests 50,000 homes in north and west Dublin, east Meath, Offaly and north Kildare are impacted. The costs for remediation are crushing, between €50,000 and €70,000 in many cases, a crushing burden that people simply cannot afford.

Cover by HomeBond, which was set up by the builders, is incapable of meeting the costs and lasts only ten years but, of course, this is a progressive problem. In reply to Deputy Catherine Murphy, the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government gave, almost word for word, the same hand-washing response as the Taoiseach's Deputies got last year from the then Government. The view was that it was a private issue between home owners, home builders, HomeBond and developers.

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