Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

First, I thank the people of Limerick, Clare, Donegal, Sligo and Mayo for the unbelievable work they have done. I am sorry for what they have had to go through. I will simplify it for the Minister of State: I will talk about the foundations in this Bill. If the Minister of State had a tree in his garden and there was a problem with the leaves, would he treat the leaves or the root of the problem? In the same way, the Minister of State will stand up and walk out of here in a few minutes and, unless he has a good pair of shoes on, he will fall over. The foundation he puts himself on is his pair of shoes. The Government's approach to the foundations does not make any sense. Under no circumstances should the foundations not be included in the Bill. To test foundations, engineers will have to dig around the outside of the foundations and test to make sure they are the same density all around. Then they will have to core-test them and do different tests on them. The expense of doing all that would go a long way towards replacing the foundations. If you have to do that on top of the engineer's fees, it makes it more expensive. The real answer is to remove all foundations and put the new structure on top of new foundations.

In the housing committee last week we had the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and the SEAI.

They told us it takes three months or so to come up with figures in respect of the building of houses. I am in the real world and I am a building contractor myself. If it took me three months to come up with a price for a house, I would not be in business. The first SEAI report I got related to the retrofit grant. It came up with costings in October. The next costings came up in February. Anyone who knows quantity surveying will know that the quantities will not have changed. All that needs to be done is for the figures to be updated with today's costs. The computer system does it all by itself. In my business, I may have to do that every week. I use the same model the Government is using but it is saying that it takes three months to update the figures.

I will give the Minister of State yesterday's figures. The maximum the Government proposes to give to people is €420,000. Is it now going to tell the people of Ireland that it is not €420,000 because it includes VAT at 13.5%? It is actually giving people €370,044.05. You then subtract €20,000 for storage and rent, if the recipients are lucky enough to be able to rent a house because we have a housing crisis. That brings the figure down to €350,044.05. With today's costs, that equates to a house of 1,944 sq. ft. However, you then have to consider today's building costs. If it can be believed, today's building costs, including the 25% increase in the cost of insulation from Kingspan to come in on 1 July, which we can plan for, means that this €350,000 will only build a house of 1,750 sq. ft.

We have forgotten one thing, however. We have forgotten that we will have to replace the bathrooms, floors and kitchens throughout the house. That is also included in the Government figures. Not only that but, when you take down the house and do all of the retrofit, you have then destroyed the sewerage system, the pipework around the house, the footpaths, the driveways, the lawns and everything else that you have taken out. If you take out a sum for remediation costs and the basic cost of replacing the bathrooms, kitchens and flooring throughout the house, it brings the €420,000 the Government has given as the maximum figure down to €300,000. This brings me to my point. At today's prices, the maximum sum the Government is allowing for only allows for a house of 1,500 sq. ft. That is what is wrong. I will return to the three months it took to update figures. It takes my business a maximum of a week because we already have the template. I do not accept the Government's figures.

Let us now move to a house in Mayo. We will use a smaller house for an example in Mayo and we will use the figures that were used earlier on. A house of 90 sq. m, which equals 969 sq. ft, would cost €197,966.70 to build. If you add €20,000 for storage and rent and a sum for the cost of finishing the house, that 90 sq. m house will cost €237,966.70 to build. I was able to come up with that using a calculator in the space of half an hour today but it takes the Government three months.

We will now go into the issue of coring, which the Government is so against. The Government representatives have stood up here to tell us about retrofit grants throughout the country. If you put insulation into the cavity of a house that has pyrite but which has not shown any signs yet, you accelerate the process. It sweats the cavity and creates a reaction, accelerating the process. Within four or five years, the walls will be in trouble. Houses are falling down all around us at the moment but, in this Bill, the Government is refusing to allow coring to be the main method by which people find out whether their houses contain pyrite. It would help in the future and save the Government money if houses were core-tested first but it does not want to do that. Why? It is because it would provide a full census of every affected house in Ireland, including those in counties which have not yet been introduced to the scheme. Several more counties are coming in and we will have more. Core testing would give a full picture but the Government does not want to see that full picture. It is common sense. The Government wants to allow houses to be retrofitted now but it will all have to be pulled down and the houses rebuilt. That is not common sense. It is a waste of money.

We must consider one more fact. Most of the houses built in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s had slate roofs. I am in building and, in any house I retrofit and renovate, the slates have to be tested, which comes at a cost. In every house I have done so far, traces of asbestos have been found in the slates. We then need a specialised unit to come out to remove the slates, bag them up and ship them to Germany and other countries, where they are dealt with. That costs approximately €10,000. The Government has not factored that into its costings. How do I know this? I am building every day. Other Independent Members, Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats and I have brought this issue to the Government through the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage but it is not listening. Why is it so afraid that we are able to get things right while the Government, with all its expensive Departments, cannot?

This is about real live people. I ask the Minister of State to take a look into the Gallery above us. I want him to look at the children, their parents, their brothers and sisters and their uncles and aunts. They will remember the Government not listening to people who understand. No matter what the Minister of State's expensive Department does, it cannot replace the expertise of those who are in the sector doing the work every day and bringing the facts to its door.

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