Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend the work of Kathy Wolff from the community relations forum in Newtownabbey. She visited Leinster House yesterday with Mr. Brian Lennon and the women from Ballymun to engage in a dialogue for diversity. The community relations forum promotes good working relationships by encouraging honest and open dialogue to enable people to have a better understanding of respect for each other's views. We all have much to learn from the manner in which these women work together. Their Looking Back: Moving Forward project is particularly interesting. They outline stories from the Easter Rising, the First and Second World Wars and their personal and differing experiences in the most recent conflict. The Ligoniel, Wolfhill women's group piece on the suffragette movement gives prominence to Mayo woman Dr. Kathleen Lynn who went on to establish St. Ultan's Hospital. I wish the community relations forum well in its future endeavours and look forward to working with it in the future. It is important that groups like that come to Leinster House so we hear what they have to say about their experiences. I look forward to more such groups visiting Leinster House in the future.

I raise the issue of pyrite and mica. This week the High Court has ordered Roadstone to permit inspections in some of its quarries. Hundreds of homes in Mayo and thousands of homes in Donegal and other counties have waited far too long for a redress scheme to be put in place. I am asking today that the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government puts his proposal for the redress scheme and gets approval from Cabinet so that the work can start on these houses which continue to crumble. The failure of the State to regulate to protect these homeowners by the implementation of regulations is scandalous. Can the Leader request the Minister of State, Deputy English, or the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, to come before this House to resolve this issue once and for all? We have had input from the expert working group and all the inspections and all that. We really need the redress scheme to be put in place. To add insult to injury, many of these homeowners are being asked to pay property tax. Others have had their mortgages taken over by vulture funds and are in a precarious and insecure situation. The only thing that will fix it is to have a proper redress scheme in place.