Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I accept that, but we have to be careful. When we speak about timelines, we need to be sure that we can bring people on board and they can have a level of hope.

I agree with other Deputies who stated that we must discuss absolute redress and consider the situation retrospectively over the past 30 years or so. We must also ensure as a collective that this scandal never happens again. In the current discourse, it appears that a political representative cannot have an opinion on any planned apartment complex in any part of the country, but it is only fair and reasonable that the political system work to be as critical and strongly observant of what developers do today as ever.

I wish to focus on the solutions. We want to work with the Minister in a timely manner and to ensure that funding is available to fix not just these homes, but these lives. We want to ensure that parents who are concerned about their children growing up in entities that could seriously harm them can have the prospect in a short time of resting their heads on their pillows and not worrying. This issue is soul destroying and life defining. Imagine reaching 60, 65 or 70 years of age, looking back on your life and realising that, for 20 years or more of it, you were terrified going to bed every night and waking up every morning and you paid thousands of euro because you did nothing more than make the mistake of trusting someone who sold you a home that they had undergone the process to ensure it worked.

The families have heard all this rhetoric before. We want a system that works, that is timely and that is funded. We do not want anyone to have to put their hands in their pockets. We want justice from those entities that did this in the first place. We want to ensure this never ever happens again. It is a national scandal and on the same level as any other national scandal we have ever dealt with in these Houses. It must be treated as such and we must all work with the Minister to get answers and justice for the families present and for any other families affected by this issue. I refer as well to those families who do not even realise they have been affected. In the case of my constituency, I do not even feel as if I can list off the apartment blocks and residents groups I have been dealing with. On one level, I am not sure if they would thank me. This is the level of fear we are dealing with. I hope the Minister appreciates this point. We all have a responsibility to get this right and to get it right soon.

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