Niall Blaney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will speak about the new scheme put in place by the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, yesterday. I strongly wish to put on record how much I welcome this new scheme. It affects the Deputy Leader's county as well as mine. There has been an awful lot of confusion overnight. I wonder how much of the €200,000 Sinn Féin raised at a golf event in the US over the past number of days has been used by it on social media overnight to confuse the people of Donegal and Mayo about the scheme.

It is very important that people realise an independent organisation has to set the rates of redress. It is not the job of the Government to do so. It has to be guided by an independent broker, which in this case is the surveyors of Ireland. It is they who are setting the rate. The rate we are working off currently is based on the 2020 market. This does not reflect the massive inflation in building prices during 2021 but the new price surveyors will set in February next year will reflect on the inflation we have had in prices and products. We cannot come out and say what that rate will be because the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland, SCSI, has to announce it in February, but we are very confident that quite a significant increase will have to take place to reflect the market increase over this past year. On that basis, we are very confident of looking after all the homeowners in Donegal with 100% redress.

There is a job to do for us all in government to ensure that every homeowner is looked after because, as we know, at the end of the day this issue goes beyond Donegal and Mayo. Other counties are being looked at, such as Tipperary, Clare, Sligo and others. The Minister is also in the process of dealing with those apartments that have fire defects. I have no doubt he will come to the House with a similarly good scheme in turn. I am delighted with the scheme and very glad to back it.