Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will do my very best, bearing in mind that I probably will not have a chance to speak again on this legislation.

If two or three houses in an estate of 40 or 50 have been certified as having pyrite, it is very probable that several others will have a pyrite problem as the same stone will have been used. The ground for each house is not prepared every second day; houses are built together. All houses in affected estates will have received the same treatment, with the same stone. The untreated houses have the same problems coming down the tracks as those already exposed as having pyrite. Aside from the fact that under no circumstances could one dream of selling such a house, unless it is given a certificate proving beyond all doubt that it does not have pyrite, the chance that many of the houses have pyrite is great because the stone will have come from the same quarry and will have been used around the same time. It is completely unfair on the owners. The houses are houses that one would be hard set to give away, unlike the ones to which the Minister referred. Selling a house in an estate where there is pyrite is just about impossible today. I ask the Minister to consider the people caught in this dilemma. It is grossly unfair to expect them to pay a property tax on a property that is in a very difficult set of circumstances through no fault of their own.

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