Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy will know, the Government decision is focused directly on multi-unit developments, apartments and duplexes initially, because that is where the predominance of the issue is. We have to focus, first and foremost, on fire safety because that is public safety. I can say, and I am happy to say it on the record of the Dáil again, that retrospective costs that deal with the fundamentals of the scheme around fire safety, water ingress and structural issues will be covered.

They will not cover maintenance if an apartment block has not been maintained. That is understood to be fair by residents, the Construction Defects Alliance and the Apartment Owners' Network. Moneys that have already been paid by residents to remediate their properties will be covered under this scheme. We are preparing the legislation and setting up an implementation group, which we did for the defective concrete blocks too, that will include residents, the Apartment Owners' Network and the Construction Defects Alliance. I want the legislation to pass this year but people should not stop the work they are doing or that they have contracted to do.

We are working through the detail of the hardship fund right now. We do not want to set up a fund in the absence of the full scheme but we need to be able to provide assistance to certain people or apartment blocks where they do not have access to funding to allow them to do some of the initial safety work, if not the full remediation. We want to get the scheme up and running.

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