Darragh O'Brien (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Prior to the Easter break I asked the Leader to bring to the house the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Coffey, or the Minister, Deputy Kelly, to review the pyrite remediation scheme. Over the Easter recess I found out that a grand total of five houses have been remediated under the Government scheme, which has been up and running for almost two years and accepting applications for more than 12 months. At the time I welcomed the scheme as a start, but I stated that it was inadequate and too cumbersome. The Minister of State, Deputy Coffey, got quite excited on the radio over the Easter break. I was not being personally critical of him; I just stated that the fact of the matter is the scheme is too slow and that hundreds of thousands of homeowners who require the State's assistance because HomeBond and the quarries were allowed to walk away by the former Minister, Phil Hogan, were left with this scheme, which has fixed five homes. This is the reality. We need to debate this and I ask the Leader to schedule time with either the Minister of State or the Minister for a response. Perhaps he has already done so. The Minister, Deputy Kelly, was particularly critical of me. Both lads seemed to take it very personally. I thought they would be bigger than that, but obviously they are not.

Is it true that an additional €7 million has been allocated to active staff in the Dublin Airport Authority to go towards their pensions? While I would welcome this, I wonder why those being hit even harder than anyone else - namely, the deferred pensioners, who have taken cuts of up to 60% - have had no additional funds to reduce the cuts to their pensions. I remind Members that it was the first time in the history of the State that any Government introduced legislation to change a specific private pension scheme to reduce pensions and payments to retired members by six weeks per annum, to reduce long-term deferred members' pensions by up to 60% and, without permission, to transfer existing members to an inferior pension scheme. This bodes ill for all other pension schemes, because the Government has set a precedent.

I want to know whether this is this true.Was an extra €7 million secured by the unions for active staff members over 54 years of age? To facilitate the making available of this information, I propose an amendment to the Order of Business that the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, attend in the House today to update us for half an hour on the IASS and that he might take questions from group leaders.