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

I was going to start by welcoming the report which is a substantial body of work and which pinpoints the difficulties and identifies important measures for the future, but having listened to the interpretation put on it by the Minister, I can come to no other conclusion but to say that the panel was established to minimise the State's responsibility in this regard. The Minister's comments were an insult to the people in the Visitors Gallery who took time off work.

I do not make these points lightly but I make them on the basis that Brendan Tuohy, the chair of the panel, attended a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht and said that no one mentioned the State's role in this. That is absolutely not true. I mentioned it, as did many other people. Two of the people on that panel were former members of the Building Regulation Advisory Board and the National Standards Authority of Ireland and they attended all of the meetings. Arthur Cox, the Government's legal advisers, legally advised the panel in drafting and crafting this report.

No one is saying, as the Minister did in his speech, that we want all of the blame for all of the failures to rest with the State. Everyone accepts that the main stakeholders have a role in this, including the quarry owners, the insurance companies, the banks and so on. The idea that the Minister has consistently tried to put forward that the State is not responsible is factually incorrect and will not be tolerated by citizens in this country. We have used similar scenarios to explain it. It is like flood victims and victims of clerical abuse. The State did not carry out the actions which gave rise to them but it has a central role in producing a remedy to sort it out. Unless the State provides the money upfront and then chases the stakeholders, those people will be left in limbo.

It is not good enough to say, as the Minister did, that the State could not have known. I am aware the panel said that as well, but it is wrong. Bodies were employed by this State which were charged with regulating standards. The Building Regulation Advisory Board and the National Standards Authority of Ireland brag in their literature that they are responsible for a continuous honing of technical expertise to ensure we are abreast of all international developments. They did not keep abreast of developments in the area of technical expertise even though the expertise existed.

For 50 years, there was knowledge in existence. Not every engineer had it but it was quite widely known that elevated levels of sulphur in sedimentary rocks containing pyrite increased the chance of a sulphate attack on concrete and steel and swelling-causing gypsum and causing heave. The first published article on this was in Britain in the late 1970s, some 35 years ago. There were other reports in the 1980s and 1990s. There was the Canadian experience, to which the Minister referred, and there was geological knowledge of the rock formation around the Tobercolleen formation in which many of the quarries are located. They should have known.

When they went looking in 2005, despite that knowledge being there, it took them two years to get an explanation for the cracking. It has been suggested by someone that if they had Googled it, they would have got it in a half an hour but to be honest, there was no explanation as to why it took two years.

The panel compliments Fingal County Council. Let us be clear, Fingal is the area where most of the victims live with the consequences and that is why it is particularly important in this context. When the first case was confirmed in June 2007 to Fingal County Council by HomeBond, it correctly notified Bay Lane quarry where the infill came from and it wrote to all of the developers who had given commencement notices that they were starting development in Fingal alerting them to the possible danger of pyrite in the materials. That was good, but it was not good enough. Why did it not write to the other three quarries in Fingal, which also have pyrite in them, including Roadstone in Huntstown and Murphy's quarry - coincidentally the same Seamus Murphy who is the friend of primary care centres - and so on? Why were those quarries not put on alert? Why did Fingal County Council not contact the developers and the builders of the projects under way? Many of them are probably owned by the people in the Visitors Gallery.

In buildings where the slab floor was laid but where there was no other construction, it would have cost approximately €5,000 to remove the infill at that stage and rebuild the property. Instead, these people have been left with a bill of approximately €50,000 and a house they cannot use. It is not good enough.

It went to the aggregates panel which devised a new standard. That is good but what does it tell one? It tells one that the existing standard was not adequate, so it changed the standard in 2007 but took it six months to do so.

Many thousands more dwellings came on the scene within the six months and one could not come to any conclusion other than that the inadequate standard emerged in 2007.

It is inadequate because Premier Insurance, the second largest insurer in the State, will not insure properties that meet the Irish standard because it is not good enough. Why when most of our standards are similar to Britain's is the standard not similar in this regard? It is because five of the seven members of the aggregates panel are from the industry representing Kilsaran, Roadstone, Irish Cement and the Irish Concrete Federation. They have a vested interest in ensuring standards are kept low and there is no testing because that would be more onerous on them. The panel is incorrect in its repeated statement that five quarries had pyrite. The members were given the names of six quarries with pyrite and I am reliably informed there are seven.

The State is responsible for this lack of standard and oversight but, crucially, it is also responsible for allowing the fraud perpetrated by HomeBond. This company was allowed to pose as the provider of a structural guarantee when everybody knew it was not worth the paper it was written on. This society knew in 2000 when the Law Society issued a warning about that. HomeBond has totally and utterly failed people and both the residents and I reject the notion of the company playing a leading role in the resolution of this process. We know the company has the lists. They should be taken from it and used. HomeBond has €25 million in the bank, little of which will be drawn down for cases other than those relating to pyrite. They money should be taken from the company and used to set up the fund to begin remedial works. Its staff do not have expertise in this area and there should be no question of them having oversight of the remedial works. That has to be done on an independent basis.

The key issue, which has been touched on by previous speakers, is that it is inadequate to address this issue on an individual, case-by-case basis as the panel suggests. There must be a systematic, State-led approach to renovation. There is no other way that this will happen. The residents refute the figures regarding the number of houses affected and the traffic light system. It is not the case that only 850 houses are critically damaged by pyrite. In one case in my area, residents were told 15 houses had been notified to HomeBond - I cannot get verification of that - when they knew of 50 in a development of more than 600 houses. If one's house is in the amber category, which means it has pyrite but is not displaying signs of distress, it will not disappear. It can only go in one direction and get worse. These home owners have a valueless, unfit for purpose noose around their necks about which they can do nothing. There can be no phasing. The only way to deal with this is by a State-led systematic approach on an estate by estate basis and that can only happen if the Minister takes the lead and sets up a fund. It has to start with comprehensive testing and not by people being forced to extend their mortgages to get a loan from the bank to pay for the work. The banks should cough up and fund the entire remediation and testing process. No costs should be borne by the residents and there should be systematic testing and renovation.

This is our responsibility. The Minister made a number of references to the poor residents, the heartache and so on but they will ring hollow unless something is delivered on this issue quickly. He said during the summer when he launched the panel that the members had three months to come up with a solution or he would impose one. That was four months ago and now he says we have to wait another ten days. These people cannot afford to have the can kicked down the road. We have been told €2 billion from NAMA will be spent on capital projects. Up to €1 billion in unspent development levies is held by local authorities. The Minister has been able to transfer the bad debts of councils to the Exchequer. He can, therefore, come up with the money to start this fund. These people cannot be left waiting and they will not go away. This issue is too serious and the State is ultimately responsible and will be judged accordingly whether it comes with the solution or not.

See this speech in context