Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is welcome. I welcome the people tuning in from all the counties affected: Limerick, Clare, Mayo, Donegal, Sligo and others. I think we can all agree that they have run an immense campaign for quite some time. I know that people in Limerick were pleased that the Minister has included them in the scheme, but people I spoke to last week were completely unimpressed and deeply distressed by the lack of engagement on amendments to the Bill last week. The people at the heart of this campaign have their homes literally crumbling down around them, and the Minister knows that. Everybody knows the awful situations in which families in homes with defective blocks are living. They fear their houses will fall down around them as their children sleep at night. The Minister said of the campaigners in his opening remarks on Second Stage in the Dáil:

... they took their message directly to the Government through all routes available. We have listened and heard it loud and clear.

If the Minister has truly listened to the families at the heart of this crisis, why were so many of them in tears on Wednesday night as they left the Dáil Chamber? I will quote directly from an email we were sent this morning from one of the people in the Gallery of the Dáil during the debate. It states:

I sat distraught in the gallery of the Dail when the so called enhanced defective block bill was voted on, on Wednesday evening as my future was decided...I watched grown men and campaigners crying on their knees after hearing the result, an image I will never forget as they realised they will not be able to keep their families safe. It felt like a death had already taken place and we were grieving.

The voice we have not heard so far in this debate is the voice of the homeowners.