Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I listened to the Minister intently. “Sinn Féin, Sinn Féin, Sinn Féin” - that is the answer he has to anything. People watching this from Mayo, and I will talk about Mayo in particular, will be absolutely disgusted. The Minister talks about trade-offs. What they see are the trade-offs between the Galway tent, the relationship with developers and the cronyism that was rife in this country. That is the trade-off they see. It really makes me angry to have to hear what the Minister has to say around this. I have worked on this issue for more over a decade. I have seen how it has destroyed people's lives. To pass it off as somehow the fault of a party that has not been in government in all that time is ridiculous. Mayo homeowners impacted by pyrite, those looking to build a house and farmers who are planning to use concrete even for a wall or shed look on in amazement as the Minister tries to wriggle out of the mess that his party and Fianna Fáil are responsible for. He should at least be honest about it.

For those ten years, I have been asking for accountability and for those responsible for plunging families into the nightmare of pyrite to be held accountable. Those responsible are the people who supplied the products, those who sold the homes to innocent buyers, the banks which lent recklessly and profited from forcing homeowners to continue paying mortgages for a pile of rubbish, a pile of rubbish that this Government left them with, the insurers who gladly took the premiums and then took to the hills, and a Government which was so enthralled by the developers that it forgot and failed to regulate the industry, because that is what has happened here. I urge Deputies, especially the Deputies from Mayo, who know these people and what they have gone through, to vote with us tonight and vote against the Government.

This is totally wrong. I cannot believe the twists and turns they are taking to somehow suggest it is Sinn Féin's fault that we have landed in this mess. This levy is going to make it worse. Last week, when we were in a situation with rising inflation and a widening construction inflation gap, what did the Government do? It came along and widened it some more. It is disgraceful.

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