Averil Power (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the announcement yesterday of an initial €10 million fund to kick-start the pyrite remediation scheme. It will come as a huge relief to people who have not been able to repair their homes and have waited a long time for a solution to be agreed at a national level. I am disappointed that the Government has not been able to secure a levy on the industry yet. I hope the issue will be revisited after the various court cases conclude. It is only right that the industry pays its fair share rather than the burden's falling on the taxpayer.

I commend the Government on moving to put the remediation scheme in place and acknowledge the work the Minister and the former Minister of State, the late Deputy Shane McEntee, did on this issue over the past couple of years to bring about a solution. I am, however, very concerned that the scheme will not provide any compensation for people who have had to repair their homes themselves before now. While some developers carried out pyrite remediation works on the properties that they built, others have refused to do so. Many families have had to pay for the work themselves. Some have spent over €30,000 or €40,000 on tests to identify the extent of the problem, on the physical repair works, on temporary accommodation and on storage while their homes were uninhabitable. That is a huge sum of money for any family to have to pay. As Sandra Lewis of the Pyrite Action Group pointed out yesterday, homeowners in their thirties could do this only by re-mortgaging or borrowing to pay for that work. Older couples had to dip into their life savings to fix their homes. It was not that these people could afford to pay for that work. In many cases it was that they simply could not afford not to do it because their homes would have been uninhabitable otherwise. It has taken many years, as the Minister knows, to bring about a solution.

I know that when the Minister was asked yesterday why these homes were not covered by the scheme he said people should take cases against developers to get the money back but for many that is not realistic because many developers have gone out of business and been declared bankrupt, and it would be futile for those families to chase somebody from whom they have no realistic opportunity of recovering money.

While I welcome the scheme I think it is unfair that those families have been excluded. The same families were denied an exemption from the local property tax. I communicated earlier this year with the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, on behalf of several families who, because they had paid for the remediation work themselves before the property tax exemption came in had to pay the full property tax. They pointed out to me that other families who had the work done a couple of months later would not have to pay the property tax and will now have the works paid for too.

Will the Minister extend the scheme to provide compensation for people who really had no choice but to carry out the work themselves before now? Will there be enough money over the next couple of years to pay for this work? I understand that the Minister indicated yesterday that the €10 million is initial funding and that more is expected over the next two or three years but I did not see a figure for what exactly the Minister intends to be put in place, or indeed, if there is any agreement in the Department of Finance about funding for the following years. The Minister is aware that there are some indications that it could cost up to €50 million. The funding announced yesterday seems to be just for the 1,000 homes in the red category, those which are worst affected. It has been estimated that up to 12,500 homes could be affected by pyrite. Will there be enough money to cover everybody who has been affected? When will the necessary legislation to establish the Pyrite Resolution Board, PRB, be brought before the Oireachtas?

The Leader of the House indicated yesterday that he had spoken to the Minister and that the Minister had indicated that he might bring the Bill first to the Seanad. Can he indicate when that might occur because I understand that the board needs to be put on a statutory footing before it can start to make payments? Finally, have plans to levy the industry been shelved altogether or do the Minister and the Government intend to revisit the issue after the relevant court cases have concluded?