Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Perhaps uniquely in this House, I know what it is like to have a defective home, having gone through the pyrite crisis a number of years ago. I know the worry and heartache that can cause. It is a real lived experience that I know the people in the Gallery will associate with, along with thousands of people all over the country. I do not believe this problem is unique to the three counties we are discussing on an ongoing basis, namely, Donegal, Mayo and Clare.

In 2006 I got a phone call from a then neighbour, informing me that a television crew was outside her home, on my street, looking for an interview about a front-page story from that morning, and my heart sank. That morning, a newspaper article detailed the beginnings of what became known as pyritic heave or the pyrite crisis. My estate at the time had commenced sales in 2003 and in 2005, when I moved, the 350 homes were occupied. Virtually all were in some way affected. A further 700 homes in a nearby community were also affected, having been built by the same firm and having material supplied by the same quarry.

As the details of the extent of the crisis emerged, my heart sank further. The building boom and lack of regulation had struck again. Extracting defective hardcore materials from the ground and not allowing sufficient time to pass before putting it into construction projects meant that oxidisation did not have time to occur. Instead it occurred while in the floor slab of my home and that of thousands of others. Petrographic analysis was not and is still not part of the process when grading hardcore materials. Instead, the reaction happened under my floor, causing cracking in the rising walls and those of my neighbours.

My home and hundreds of others were remediated privately, following the settlement of a High Court case between Menolly Homes and Lagan Asphalt, to which I and others were extremely interested parties. The methodology for that remediation became the template for the Pyrite Resolution Board, which benefitted thousands of families on the east coast following a decision of the Government of 2011 to 2016.

Perhaps uniquely in this House, I know what it is like to live in a home that through no fault of one's own has potentially major structural issues. I could speak at great length about some of the stories from my constituents and people in Meath, Louth and beyond regarding gas pipes being at risk, among other things.

This Bill is a very important step in addressing a matter that is of utmost importance to me. Your home is your castle and having spoken to families in Donegal and Mayo in recent months, I wholeheartedly support their campaign to get homes repaired as quickly and as equitably as possible.

The Government has engaged in good faith to improve the provisions of this Bill and to expand the scope of the support for affected homeowners. As a result, we now have a much improved scheme to that launched by the former Minister, Eoghan Murphy, that moves us much closer to delivering on the important measures that will allow affected homeowners to begin to move on with their lives. There has been significant engagement with local authorities in the affected areas, with housing agencies, the NSAI and others. These consultations were undertaken in order to maximise the impact of this scheme; all of which was done with the view of helping those who have found themselves in this situation, through no fault of their own.

I repeat some of the comments made by Deputies O'Donnell and McHugh on the issue of foundations. This does not just relate to floor slabs, because this material can also get under foundations. There have been extensive investigations, including on a particular motorway in this country under which the foundations for the crossing bridges were supplied by the same quarry that supplied materials for my home. This happened a good number of years previously. Such was the extent of the lack of knowledge in the building control sections of this State that those investigations had to take place. It is odd that if we are going to clear a site, we are not going to test the foundations. The State will be putting hundreds of thousands of euros into each family home, and there is a potential risk that we will have to revisit the matter. That does not make sense to me, as somebody who had a home with pyrite in the floor slab - not the foundation, which is a different thing - because this can cause swelling, cracking, issues with gas pipes and so on. These are unintended consequences. We know of this, so let us try to resolve the matter before the legislation is passed.

I commend the members of the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage. They put dozens, if not hundreds, of hours into this process. A number of them have spoken already today. The committee does some very important work. I know that this is not a particularly easy issue to deal with. I welcome a number of key improvements to the new scheme, namely, the development of an independent appeals mechanism for homeowners, which an important change to allow the maximum opportunity for homeowners to engage with the process.

There is a need, as has been stated by quite a number of Deputies, to pursue the perpetrators whose actions gave rise to this situation. I ask the Minister to outline what steps or mechanisms the State is taking or putting in place to recoup the significant outlay of public moneys this scheme will undoubtedly involve. Major construction companies that participated in creating this crisis should not escape consequences, and the taxpayer should not bear the ultimate cost. A plethora of companies, consultants and engineers should be on the hook for this scheme. I require the assurance that we will not, as many previous speakers indicated, simply let this slide.

The scheme is not perfect but, equally, I have not come across one that is. The pyrite scheme was far from perfect, but it has been successful in putting lives back on track. The scheme we are discussing will most likely be no different. I ask that the Minister consider some of the amendments that will be tabled on Committee Stage - I know he is expecting them - in order to potentially improve upon the significant work already undertaken by his Department and the housing committee.

I will conclude by discussing the apprehension, pain and upset that has been visited upon families. As I said earlier, I have experienced this. My circumstances were different in 2006 when this occurred, in 2011, when my home was remediated, and in 2013, when the Government scheme got up and running and was used to remediate thousands of homes in Leinster. Ten years is a long time, and the Statute of Limitations, unfortunately, has most likely kicked in for most people. The legal minds in this House will undoubtedly dwell upon that.

We talked about amending the Statute of Limitations in the past in respect of other legislation. The fact of the matter is, however - and this has been touched upon by a couple of other Deputies - that it is important for us to recognise that our role is to legislate and to bring about schemes such as this. Our role is also to ensure value for money. Notwithstanding the very important work that has to be done to remediate these homes, because these families had absolutely nothing to do with the lack of quality in the building blocks and other materials used to build their homes, we also have a responsibility to the taxpayer. It is for that reason that I have asked for clarity on what exactly the State is proposing to do. Is it going to assist individuals in the pursuit of these companies or will it pursue them? That is something we should all aspire to, particularly as our building regulation has been lacking over many decades. Even after pyrite, there were deficiencies in the changed building regulations.

Petrographic analysis, as I said, is still not done on hardcore material. Grading, pressure testing and things like that are done, but petrographic analysis is not. The argument is that it is too expensive, but there are many quarries in this country, particularly in Leinster, and it is well known that these are situated in strata of material that can cause problems if it is quarried and not left sitting for a number of months. The biggest issue, and the reason pyrite occurred in floor slabs, related to the fact that because we were in the middle of a building boom, this material was being extracted, broken up, graded, put in trucks and delivered to sites without the passage of any time. Our system is flawed to this day and we need to fix it.

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