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

It is almost a year since the late Minister of State, Deputy Shane McEntee, announced the scheme. A year on, the scheme has not yet accepted live applications. Now that Engineers Ireland has established the register of competent persons and the training has been done, will building condition assessments, which in many instances residents have paid for, be accepted and will those files and applications be able to go live in advance of Christmas? It would be important that we get some indication of when those applications can go live.

Is it still the Minister's intention to bring forward the legislation to empower the pyrite resolution board to take funds or whatever? Does that legislation have to be in place first? Will we see it this side of Christmas?

The problem with HomeBond is that this was not a structural guarantee scheme even though it gave that impression. HomeBond still has €25 million in its accounts which it will not access for normal purposes because now it is a properly structured scheme. HomeBond's contribution should be in funds. Those funds should be taken off HomeBond because it has not the competent expertise in this area. It is the one that went out and examined houses and told the residents that they did not have pyrite and there was nothing to worry about, and then, when it emerged that they did have pyrite, stated that had nothing to do with it. The idea of HomeBond being involved in the remediation process is not acceptable.

See this speech in context