Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to continue where my colleague, Deputy Doherty, left off in terms of the mica scandal in Donegal. There will be families in Donegal and Mayo who are following this debate on the recovery and resilience fund and will have listened in recent days to Ministers talking about retrofitting and the need to build more houses who are questioning how on Earth they could have ended up with a scheme such as the defective concrete blocks grant scheme which, where a house is demolished, does not provide for windows to be replaced or the funding of energy efficient building practices, never mind that the work is not fully funded. The contribution in respect of a house that has to be demolished will not be 10%, it will be 30%. What does that mean in real terms? It means a contribution of over €100,000, a second mortgage. In the case of people who worked all of their lives and are in their later years, they have no chance of getting the matching funding to make their homes safe and so their homes are crumbling around them.

I appeal to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, to work with his Cabinet colleagues, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy McConalogue, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and the Taoiseach, all members of the Fianna Fáil Party, to do what is right by the people of Donegal and Mayo. This scheme, as is, will remain in place unless the Government amends it in the next number of days. Today, we are discussing a Government submission to the European Commission that talks about retrofitting, a carbon tax and standards.

Yet, the Government is facilitating a scheme that does not help families to rebuild their homes to any of those standards. It expects them, for example, to use windows that may be 20 or 30 years old.

It is an outrageous and offensive scheme. It is an insult to all the people in Donegal who worked politically with the Mica Action Group to deliver a scheme that would give people hope they could rebuild their lives. Homeowners thought they would get a scheme offering 90% cover, which was unjust in the first place, and the banks would play a role. Deputy Doherty and I have written repeatedly about this matter to the Minister for Finance and the Central Bank. I have raised the issue with the Minister in the Chamber. He said he did not know what I was talking about and he could not understand why the banks should play a role. These are the banks with assets that are worth nothing now but which will be restored to full market value. They were nowhere to be seen.

It is time to move on now. Both the Government, with its scheme, and the banks have failed people in Donegal and Mayo. I take this opportunity, face to face with the Minister, to say to him that he needs to introduce a fully funded scheme, giving 100% cover, like the pyrite remediation scheme for the families in Dublin and north Leinster who, rightly, were given full security to rebuild their lives. That is what we are asking for and the decision on it will rest on the Minister's desk. I am asking him to sign off on it urgently.

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