Maria Byrne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State who is here on behalf of the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy.

The issue I am raising is subsidence in former local authority houses. There is an estate in Limerick that was built in the 1960s by the local authority. By the late 1970s the local authority admitted there was a problem with the estate. It had to knock down half of it and one of the avenues adjacent to it and rebuild the houses. At that stage, cracking and a number of issues were found due to subsidence in the houses. The local authority applied to the State for funding. The money was provided and the houses were rebuilt. Those houses are fine, but the houses that were not knocked down at the time are beginning to show subsidence. The estate appears to have been built on quarry land.

The residents got an engineer to examine the structure of the houses. They believe an amount of work must be done. They might have to be piled at the bottom. The most interesting thing is that the ground rent for the houses is still owned by the local authority, although a number of them have been purchased. Can anything be done to help the residents whose houses are subsiding?