Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)

I want to talk about the defective blocks grant scheme that is being made available to home owners in the west of Ireland. The Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, stated that the scheme would be the biggest redress scheme in the history of the State. He said it would be over €3 billion. He told home owners in the west of Ireland that they would get €500,000 each, the biggest redress scheme in the history of the State. That was nonsense.

I want to share a story. I met a family recently on a site where they had just demolished their home. They were absolutely traumatised. Their home was about the size of an average detached house in rural Ireland. They will be €200,000 short of redress. That is €200,000. They had a mortgage left of six years, which was €900 per month. That is what they had left on their mortgage. Their mortgage now will be 21 years at €1,800 a month. That is what 100% redress looks like in the west of Ireland. Micheál Martin is an absolute disgrace. There is no additional money provided in this budget for the defective blocks scheme that reflects anything like the €3 billion he boasted of. He misled people in the west of Ireland. He gave the impression that they would get genuine justice, just as home owners in Dublin and Leinster rightly got 100% redress. Those 3,000 home owners who suffered the affliction of pyrite got 100% redress. I have given the Minister an example of what is happening, by contrast, in the west of Ireland. When houses are being rebuilt, I ask the Government not to insult people by saying it has stepped up. It is such an egregious offence to people in Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim, Clare and Limerick, and in my home county of Donegal. It is second-class citizenship. I am appealing to the Government to urgently look at the mistakes of this scheme to see how cruel it is.

Thousands of council houses are also affected but there is no plan for them. In my home county, most tenants in private housing and all tenants in public housing have no pathway. They are living in utterly dangerous homes. They have a scheme that is dysfunctional. They are left at the mercy of the market where builders can just name their price. This is a deep injustice. I am appealing to the Government now because it misled the people of Ireland. There is no 100% redress and there is no justice. It needs to change urgently.

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