Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)

I would like to thank Deputy Ward for all his work on this motion. It is very technical and I was proud to cosign it on behalf of Labour.

I heard the response from the Minister for Housing, Deputy Browne, earlier and to be honest, I was shocked - even by my standards - at how bland and unresponsive his response was to the substantive issues raised in the motion. The Government has designed a scheme that is so rigid it cannot respond in real time. This is not a grants scheme; this is redress. There is no acknowledgement in anything anyone in government has said about the harm this scheme is doing to people, the stress it is causing and the real mental anguish.

There is a misconception out there that this is just an issue, say, on the Inishowen Peninsula; it is not. This is an issue in Limerick. I had Olivia Sheil, cochair of the Limerick Defective Blocks Action Group, in my constituency office on Monday nearly in tears as she described how the house she bought little over a decade ago is falling down around her. She first discovered this when she went to get the SEAI grant to pump the walls, which exposed all the cracks. Her mortgage is going to be doubled and she is a working, lone parent. There will be an extra €125,000 or whatever added onto her mortgage because the scheme does not fully cover the breadth of work that needs to be done to her home. Her home is semi-detached so she has to put a wall inside a wall, essentially, inside the house because they will not test the house next door.

We have discussed this many times in this Chamber, and we are five years on from the opening of the scheme and two years on from the enhanced scheme. The scheme is deeply flawed and as per usual with schemes in this State - and this is always the way we treat victims of abuse, with institutional Ireland doing this for generations - the burden of proof is always put on the victim and the victim has to prove that he or she is not a liar. That is the way this scheme operates. We are at the tip of the iceberg in the city of Limerick, which I represent, on this. There is a Roadstone quarry in Bunratty where these defective concrete blocks Olivia Sheil has in her house came from in the early 1990s.

The fact of the matter is we do not know yet how seriously we are genuinely affected by this. The lack of regulation on behalf of Fianna Fáil Governments at the time in particular, does not just relate to this. We see it in apartments and in various aspects of bad housing policy. I am afraid this new Government, given what the Minister is doing with apartment standards and VAT cuts, has not learned a single lesson. The proof is in the pudding with this scheme. Just over 220 dwellings were completed nationwide up to mid-2025. A year ago, the Government promised to extend the increase in the cap of everyone availing of the scheme. Where is the legislation? This is just another delay and more mental anguish and mental torture that these poor families and individuals are being put through by the State. The Government must fast track the promised legislation for retrospective payment. Families who received grant approval under the old Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland costings are faced with tenders from contractors that obviously reflect current market conditions and are way above what they were. People cannot find tens of thousands of euro, if not hundreds of thousands of euro to plug the enormous gaps in what they are required to pay. This is not their fault. These homeowners must have their grant award increased in line with current costs.

The Minister, in particular, needs to come in and accept his predecessor's scheme does not work. We need a new end-to-end scheme and we need 100% redress. We have the model with the pyrite scheme in Fingal. The pyrite remediation scheme is structured on an end-to-end basis. It is not a grant scheme and it does not ask homeowners to be project managers. We have situations there now with this scheme where people are sitting behind desks inside in the Housing Agency, downgrading people at the stroke of a mouse or a pen without even going out to see the house. That is disgraceful. When we consider the difference with the pyrite scheme, is it any wonder people all along the west coast are looking on with envy and anger?

The motion points out the terrible psychological effects of the trauma and stress these families have gone through which would not have been as bad if the State had responded appropriately without making them, as it always does and always has, prove they are not lying. Why would you lie about something like this? Their homes are crumbling around them. I welcome the fact this motion recognises the need for mental health supports. These families have been let down by the State, left to languish in houses that were once treasured family homes. I recall Deputy Charles Ward, in his maiden speech, which has stuck with me ever since, saying their houses were like Weetabix. We need urgency from the Government on this. We cannot continue to fail these people. I am really disappointed by the countermotion. It is absolutely unacceptable and I urge the Government to rethink it.

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