Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for taking this matter today. On 26 April, apartment owners in a particular complex in Dublin South-Central were informed by the management company that they were each going to be levied with a fee of €32,000 for construction defects in the complex to cover the work needed to bring it up to the correct fire safety standards. Of that sum, €7,000 must be paid by the first week of June. Regardless of their circumstances, they have been levied with this amount. The cause of this deficit is being borne by the apartment owners. It is a result of the self-regulation system that was at the core of construction in the Celtic tiger years. Homeowners are not to blame yet they are the ones being obliged to find these eye-watering sums to rectify something that was most certainly was not of their doing. I received several emails from residents of this particular complex. I will read an extract from one of them in which the writer states:

I am a single, working mother, paying a mortgage and trying to keep my head above water as the cost of living soars. All my life I have tried to do the right thing, I work fulltime ... and have never before looked to my politicians for help. To be landed with a bill of 32,000Euro , which I consider a life -altering amount, is quite simply beyond my capabilities and I am so distraught and stressed over it that I really don't know what to do or who to turn to. How is any normal person supposed to face this?

Institutional landlords and private landlords get to write this cost off against tax and yet normal owner-occupiers have to pony up such huge amounts without any support, as yet. However, it is unconscionable and an issue that must be addressed urgently. These homeowners need a resolution. I appreciate there is a working group and I can almost predict the speech the Minister of State will give in response. I am conscious the working group is ongoing. It is due to report by June, one would hope. Presumably its report will make a redress recommendation that will then go to Cabinet and be hammered out in the budget negotiations. That is all of our hope in this situation. However, it is too long for the homeowners I have mentioned. If a redress scheme is envisaged, then why can we not look at an interim one? We all agree some sort of scheme is going to happen here. In light of mica and pyrite there is going to have to be an apartment owners redress scheme. If we know that, why can we not establish some sort of State loan or give letters of comfort, on the back of which those homeowners can be guaranteed to go to credit unions? Why can we not set up some sort of system like that, such that loans will be repaid out of tax allowances or some other way for the homeowners to be reimbursed?

I wish this complex was the only one in Dublin South-Central but unfortunately it is not. Pretty much every email I get in asks me not to mention the name because they are now terrified their properties cannot be sold. They are in a dire situation. I appreciate also that next week, the Minister is going to bring a memo to Cabinet on the defective blocks redress scheme. In light of that we know that where homeowners have been caught out through what was a deficit in construction oversight, the State is going to put in redress. On the back of that, I ask that we put in some sort of a system that supports these homeowners in that interim period.