Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The Minister released the pyrite panel report before the summer recess with a great fanfare. The scale of the problem was identified and at least 10,000 home owners are in ownership of what essentially are valueless properties. At the time, the Minister assured Members the stakeholders involved, namely, the insurance industry, the construction industry, banking, HomeBond and so on were being given until the end of September to come up with solutions to fund the remediation works and to this problem and that if they did not do so voluntarily, he would impose a solution on them. It is now 2 October and I note that last week, the Construction Industry Federation's spokesperson, Tom Parlon, was highly voluble in stating that he, as a spokesperson allegedly for the stakeholders, has no solution to this problem. Consequently, the ball is firmly in the Minister's court with regard to telling Members the status of the fund to implement plan B, as he assured them at the start of the summer. Moreover, I might add this is required now both because of the failure of the stakeholders and because the State cannot shirk its responsibility for its role in this scenario. I refer to the fact that evidence existed for decades about the problem of pyrite in other countries such as Britain and Canada, as well as in the geological formations of the land around us. In addition, the fact the building regulations were changed in December 2007 and the HomeBond structural guarantee was changed in 2008 is indicative that both these schemes were defective and deficient in the first place. The State stood over a lack of regulation, a lack of testing and an inadequate guarantee system through HomeBond. Therefore, the State must take responsibility now. These home owners cannot wait any longer and a long-overdue requirement now exists for the Minister to tell Members from where the fund will come and what is the plan B to finally solve this problem.

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