Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

I thank Deputy Ward for that excellent speech and for his campaigning. I also thank the campaigners he is connected to. It is a rare day in the Dáil that a motion is signed by the entire Opposition. That speaks to the injustice that is being inflicted on people here. It also speaks to the incredible campaigning that has been taking place for years. I have had the pleasure of meeting many of the campaigners. I spoke at one of the massive marches that happened in Dublin. I also got the benefit of their assistance in working with people to establish a similar 100% redress campaign for those affected by apartment and duplex defects.

These campaigners are always generous with their time and advice. They look to help others even though they have enough problems of their own in terms of what they face when go home, as illustrated by Deputy Ward. I remember when this issue emerged, there were attempts to divide and rule the country by saying that people in Dublin do not care about this issue. The Government does not really try that any more. Those who would see this injustice continue do not try it any more because it is clear that broad public support is with those who are affected by defective concrete. There is a sense of just how awful it is and of the injustice that has been done to them, as well as the responsibility of the State for that injustice and the necessity for a proper and genuine 100% redress scheme.

The motion, which is comprehensive, clearly outlines what the real issues are. Families are being forced to wait for years for redress and remediation in crumbling homes. They are suffering immense emotional, psychological and financial distress. As Deputy Ward outlined, they worry that their ceilings will come down and their homes will fall down around them. They are listening out for cracking sounds at night. How anyone can be forced to live like that by this State is outrageous. They are forced to move out during storms. The partial repair works that are done do not fix the problem. People in this situation and facing this horror day in, day out are having to go into debt to fund repairs themselves. They are being given the run-around over and over by representatives of the State who are meant to be helping them but instead deny, obfuscate and gaslight them.

An elephant in the room here is that it is not just private homes that are affected. Schools, health centres, community buildings and other critical infrastructure have also been built with defective blocks and the Government is doing even less about it. I hope that it does not take a tragedy, such as a total building collapse, to force it to act.

Engineers Ireland has confirmed that IS 465:2018 is not fit for purpose. It is scientifically unsound. It arbitrarily excludes many homes with concealed structural failures. Why is it still being used? Is it because it saves the State money, for now? This is incredibly short-sighted, just like the so-called "light-touch regulation" that caused this crisis in the first place. It will end up costing the State more in the long run when homes have to be remediated multiple times because remediation was not done properly the first time around. That is without taking into account the personal toll and the personal cost - the mental health burden and so on - of that process.

IS 465:2018 must be urgently replaced with a fit-for-purpose standard that follows the science. In its countermotion, the Government says that the defective concrete blocks scheme is not redress or compensation; it is just a grant. Why would it say that? What is the logic of that when there has been a campaign for redress, when everyone calls it "redress" and when redress is what people understand it to be? The Government is saying it to try to wriggle out of responsibility for the crisis. That is why. It is saying it to deny the lived reality of thousands of homeowners whose walls are crumbling, whose children are living in uncertainty and whose lives are disrupted by the lack of regulation. The State cannot absolve itself of responsibility just by changing the name of a scheme and calling it a grant. Homeowners know the truth and will not be gaslit that this is some kind of present or grant from the State. That kind of language is fooling nobody. The Government's countermotion is full of weasel words that are designed to sound good, but on closer inspection they turn out to full of holes, a lot like defective concrete.

The Government amendment says that homeowners can get "grants for 100 per cent of eligible expenditure". That sounds good, but it is a message that is designed to reassure those who are not affected that they do not need to worry because the people affected are getting what they asked for. It tells them that if they hear any moaning, it is coming from people who are just being difficult. It is not accurate and it is not true. It turns out that a lot of critical expenditure does not qualify as eligible expenditure. There is an arbitrary cap on the scheme. The Government is being economical with the truth when it claims that early movers are not being penalised. Many of them cannot get retrospective payments and have been forced to accept a flawed scheme or nothing.

That violates their constitutional right to equal treatment before the law and it must be addressed. The State's poor treatment of the victims here resembles what it tries to do to all other victims of State mistreatment and injustice. There are residential abuse survivors on hunger strike outside the Dáil because they have been denied access to healthcare. The root cause of all this distress is corporate greed and the failure of the Government to restrain it by properly regulating the construction sector. The same issues arose with the same dynamic in the case of the apartment and duplex defects from the 1990s onwards. Has anything fundamentally changed?

The latest policy from the Government is to reduce apartment standards so developers can make even more profit. I am sure the same arguments about viability were made in the past as a reason not to properly regulate the construction sector and construction materials. By the way, viability just means profit, and giving more profit to developers. There is a real injustice here that those responsible have not been prosecuted, or even at the very least forced to pay compensation for the harm they have caused and continue to cause. Instead, we have a concrete levy that spreads the cost widely to those with no responsibility, while at the same time the victims are still not being properly compensated. We have to ask why this corporate impunity happens again and again. We saw it before with the developers and the banks that crashed the economy but were allowed to get off scot-free while ordinary people suffered years of crippling austerity. The same is happening here with victims of defective blocks while the quarries and the block manufacturers are getting off scot-free.

There is also no accountability from the Government of the day. A 2017 expert panel report told us that local authorities were not given the funds by central government to enforce building control regulations. Building control authorities were unable to test construction materials in-house. Whose responsibility is that? That is on the State. That is on the current Government, which includes the same parties and some of the same individuals who are sitting in Cabinet today. The Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, presided over this crisis from the beginning and is still in there today trying to limit his Government's responsibility for it. We, in People Before Profit, fully support 100% redress for all those affected by this crisis. None of it is their fault. They must be fully compensated, and those responsible should be held to account, including the quarries, the block manufacturers, the builders who knowingly used defective materials and, I would say, the Galway tent Fianna Fáil Government that allowed it to happen. It allowed it to happen in order that some people could maximise their profits at the cost of immense ongoing distress for ordinary people.

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