Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As I am sure the Minister knows, there is a growing frustration among homeowners, as well as among social housing and private rental tenants impacted by Celtic Tiger era defects. We have always said we want to work with the Minister on a collaborative basis and it is an issue the Minister knows many of us in the Opposition have been campaigning on for a long time. The frustration is that the Minister received the report from the working group on defective buildings a year and a half ago. The Minister brought a memorandum to Cabinet almost a year ago and we welcomed the fact that he was promising both a redress scheme and emergency measures. The Minister met homeowners in a webinar on 18 January and he made it clear to them that legislation and, crucially, emergency funding, would be available this year. For some of the families affected, that emergency funding is for vital fire escapes, fire wardens and sprinkler systems etc. I do not want to make this a political argument - we will have some of those in the subsequent questions - because we want to work with the Minister on this. People want to know on what date they will be able to apply for the emergency funding, which is a reasonable question. Also, on what date does the Minister expect to publish the general scheme of the legislation?

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