Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Leader might recall that some time ago I mentioned Councillor Willie Crowley. May the Lord have mercy on him, because he died recently. He championed the cause of the residents of Millfield Manor in Kildare. Millfield Manor was a development of 79 houses and 129 apartments. In March 2015, six of those houses were razed to the ground in 30 minutes by a fire. It was the most devastating fire I have ever seen. Indeed, I observed one house razed to the ground in seven minutes flat from the time the first flames were seen. The developer of that property went bankrupt in 2011 with debts of over €100 million. The UK system prevented the developer from being a director of a company for ten years.

The residents who remain in Millfield Manor are faced with bills in excess of €35,000 to make their houses safe from fire. Mothers and children go to bed every night in that estate petrified that a fire might occur again. The remedial work has not yet been done and nobody appears to be able to nail down who is responsible for that work. One can imagine how horrified I was last weekend to discover that the same developer is developing properties in Dublin city, having walked away from €100 million of debt. Now, through another company, he is claiming 30 years of construction experience, the best possible standards and so forth. The developer is selling houses for over €0.5 million a pop. There is something terribly wrong in this country that somebody can walk away from their responsibilities, set up a new company and head off into the hills again. It is wrong in every sense. I do not know what the Leader, I or any other Member of the House can do about it, but I understood that we had put an end to the cowboys in this country back in the 1980s.