Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)

The motion today is supported by all the Opposition parties because they all recognise the huge difficulty for homeowners the length and breadth of the country in a number of counties, including Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, Clare and a whole lot of others. Many of the people who produced the concrete products shared them with other quarries and other providers. In many places, we will find that they have seeped into other counties that we are not aware of yet. That is one of the issues that needs to be recognised.

This programme states that we can have applications from certain counties which have been approved for applications, of which Sligo is one. Only five people so far have got their applications in. I met a woman on the street in Sligo town a couple of weeks ago and she told me that she was filling in this application because her home was crumbling. She said it is as if we are pretending that this is happening to us and the Government is telling us to prove we are wrong. She asked, "Would I pretend I have cancer? I would not." People are not pretending that their houses are crumbling around them. The way in which they have to fill out these forms and the huge number of criteria they have to go through only to prove they have a problem for which they need to get proper and full redress is absolutely outrageous. It is an example and a reflection of where this Government policy is. The Government policy is not about providing for people; it is about blocking people from getting any help. That is what it is really about and that is the issue most people have with this particular scheme the Government has put in place. The countermotion it has tabled today is reinforcing that high wall it has built in front of people that they cannot get over.

There are also a whole lot of other people who are in council houses or local authority houses. They see it around them, but the council will not even go and look at these houses. It will not even do assessments of them. We also have issues with commercial and community buildings, which have the same problems but again they are not included in the scheme.

The fact the Government is burying its head in the sand and trying to avoid this issue has to be called out. The Opposition is calling it out clearly, and the response from Government is to block it even more. It is to turn away and say that "No, we will not listen; we will not look at the reality that people have to live through". That is the greatest scandal this Government has ever come across.

People mentioned earlier that we have had light touch regulation in the past. Most of this was done through the early to late 2000s, but it went on even after that for quite some time. There are people who had houses built after the bust in the economy and they are now noticing the same problems. What we need is a Government that will recognise that what it has done to date has been an utter failure. It needs to recognise that what we are putting forward is a solution that it can work with. Government needs to work with this because it is for the defence of ordinary people the length and breadth of the country who are losing their homes.

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