Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I wish to bring to the Taoiseach's attention the shocking case of a new social housing development, St. Germaine, in Ballybrack in my area. It is in the hands of Co-operative Housing Ireland, an AHB, and was built by a developer called Kavco. It was finished at the end of last year and there are 31 units with many families. I met people the other day and, while they were delighted that, after many years – sometimes as long as ten or 15 years – on the housing list, they had got their houses, they had contacted me to say that the apartment block was falling apart. I was shocked by what I saw. People had only moved in in the past three or six months, yet there was already damp rising up the walls everywhere, people had been told in some cases not to use the electrical systems because of rising damp and water ingress, and there were many other areas where it looked like no one had bothered finishing the work, for example, uneven surfaces and floors, water pouring into the car park and creating large pools there, etc. I could go on through the list. It is unbelievable. This block is just built.

The developer is nearly out of the one-year period after which it can walk away from all of this. Something has to be done about it, yet nothing has been so far. I ask that, as a matter of urgency, Co-operative Housing Ireland be contacted and we not allow the developer to walk away without doing the remediation works necessary to make that place as it should be.

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