Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am taking this matter on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, Deputy Darragh O’Brien. I thank the Deputy for raising this and providing us with an opportunity to update the House on this important matter. I assure the House of this Government’s commitment to supporting homeowners and residents of many apartments and duplexes that have defects.

I fully acknowledge the stress caused when defects arise in the homes and buildings people live in. Since receiving Government approval in January 2023 of the draft legislation to establish supports for the remediation of defects, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage has been working to progress the various programmes of work required to replace the remediation scheme on a statutory footing. The Deputy will appreciate it does take time to get a scheme like this completed and established on a statutory footing through a process in the Houses.

A key aspect of this work is developing a code of practice in the context of the Fire Services Acts to provide guidance to relevant professionals, including guidance on interim safety measures. The development of this code of practice was a key recommendation of the working group that the Minister established to examine defects in housing. The group working includes industry professionals and representatives of the local authority fire services, the Housing Agency and the Department. The work of the group is nearing completion, and the Department expects to be in a position to publish the code of practice for public consultation in the weeks to come.

The code of practice will be a key feature on which the operations of the statutory scheme will be based. It will support the development of a reasonable and practical approach to resolving fire safety defects and to ensuring a consistent approach nationwide to remediation. While the code of practice will apply to the remediation of fire safety defects, it could be built upon in regard to the remediation of structural and water ingress defects in due course. The Deputy can see the priority is in terms of fire safety. The issue of the remediation of structural and water ingress defects can be looked at subsequent to dealing with the fire safety issue. The Deputy highlighted the recent fire in Blanchardstown. Everybody will accept that we must deal with this aspect as an immediate and early part of the process.

The scheme will be administered by the Housing Agency nationwide. Interaction and interdependency with the local authority fire services and others will need to be considered, with the remediation of fire safety defects carried out to the satisfaction of the local authority fire services. An advice and information service portal within the Housing Agency is in the process of being established. In addition, work is under way to draft the required legislation, which will include the scope, eligibility and conditions of the remediation scheme. While the Department is working on the development of the scheme as a matter of priority, sufficient time is required to draft the legislation in order to ensure that the scheme is fit for purpose, provides value for taxpayers' money and contains appropriate oversight and governance measures.

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