Frances Black (Independent) | Oireachtas source

As other colleagues have said here today, a person’s home is supposed to be a place of comfort, and a shield from the elements and the trials and tribulations of the world outside. It is meant to be a safe place where a person can go and rest.

Seeing people forced to live in houses that crumble around them is absolutely devastating. I cannot get the images and videos of the homes built with defective mica blocks out of my head. In some of the online videos, the blocks come apart like damp sand when touched. It is an absolute nightmare from which thousands of people across the country have been unable to wake up.

It is an indictment of the cowboy capitalist attitude that has pervaded elements of the construction sector for some time now, where there was a culture of cutting corners to maximum profit for all, while risking the health and lives of the people living in substandard and sometimes hazardous buildings. It is not just the homes which are riddled with mica and pyrite but it also concerns the defective apartments that were rendered unlivable, like Priory Hall. It is also the damp rodent-infested local authority housing that violates the dignity and humanity of its residents.

People are made to live in dire, dangerous conditions and the State, by its negligent attitude to regulation and enforcement, is complicit in the disasters which unfolded.

The mica homeowners deserve 100% redress.