Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is a very difficult situation for these people who must now meet a significant expense to remediate certain deficiencies in how their homes were built. It is a very stressful situation and they are trying to find assistance with that, which I understand.

Building standards were not complied with during the boom-time years. Today, unfortunately, certain politicians are looking for us to relax standards once again and to remove layers of oversight when it comes to building, but we will not do that. In 2014 the controls and regulations on building designing, architectural works, planning and the actual completion of works were greatly improved to protect people who were buying homes under this new control regime. The difficulty we have is that there is a significant risk to the taxpayer if the Government accepts liability for individual buildings or for works that were not completed in the appropriate way, while at the same time potentially letting off builders who are responsible in this matter.

Of course we want to find a pathway to help these people, but it is difficult to see one that does not take on this enormous open-ended liability on every other taxpayer in the State that the State simply could not meet.

On the second part of the Deputy's question, at the time of last year's budget agreement in principle was reached for a scheme for people in Donegal and Mayo where pyrite, pyritic heave and mica have been damaging internally the concrete blocks of buildings that were built. My Department and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform are close to completing the outline of that scheme. An amount of money has been allocated to it in 2019, but we just need to finalise the details of how the scheme will be applied in those two counties.

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