Niall Blaney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for attending to discuss this vital legislation, which I strongly support. I thank some of the Opposition spokespersons for their thoughtful approach to this legislation. Both Senators Boyhan and Flynn talked about bringing this legislation back to the people. They are 100% right that this legislation must be about the applicants and the affected homeowners.It is about their chances of getting their lives back in order again. This has been an awful, traumatic time for these people. A lot of work has gone into this over the past two years. The Bill did not arise two months ago. It arose from consultation with the Minister and the Mica Action Group. Following weeks of going into the Minister's office, I met him and the action group in Donegal when he launched the first scheme. It was not a scheme of his making but he launched it to get the measures under way and to see at what stage we were. There has been an enormous evolution of the scheme since August 2020 because of the Minister's flexibility in meeting the action group and homeowners, as well as working with us as politicians. The Minister and officials from his Department have put in hundreds of hours, as we have, into this. The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy McConalogue, has put in hundreds of hours separately meeting with the action group. Due to the transformation of the scheme, today's scheme is unrecognisable from the original scheme. The key demand from the first gathering in Dublin was 100% redress and that is addressed in the Bill, as well as many other issues. We would like for the Bill to include more and I will bring some of these concerns to the floor of the House today.

I also received phone calls during the weekend. I was at a meeting in Buncrana last night. There is so much misinformation and information out there that people do not know if they are coming or going. People are in real distress and they need to know what the true information is. The Government could set up a specific website for information purposes to give people proper direction on this. Engineers are key to this. Politicians can say one thing on one side of the House and something else on the other side, but the families are caught in between and that anger has to come out. This scheme must progress. People need to get on with their lives and in doing that, a website would be helpful. Engineers involved will play a key role. The relationship between engineers and applicants is important. At the end of the day, homeowners should pay less attention to what we as politicians say from here on and should consult their engineer, from whom the real information is obtained. There is too much misinformation and toing and froing, and we do not always have the facts right. Engineers have to have the facts right because they have to provide and stand over guarantees.

I was present during the eight hours of the committee hearing. It was a tremendous piece of work because we heard first-hand from the homeowners what the issues were. I heard very clearly what the representatives of Engineers Ireland said about foundations. The institution is pleading with people to let it know if they have information on foundations or have a house with foundations that are in trouble because at the moment, its clear understanding is there are no foundations in any county where there is bother. Even the scientist who came before the committee was asked to pass on the information he had of where his samples came from. That information has not been passed on yet. If there is information about foundations available, let us have it. I am glad the Government gave the guarantee this morning that foundations will be included in the provision if and when the National Standards Authority of Ireland reports on it, but there is a great fear among people that foundations will fall apart. The solid information from Engineers Ireland, which provides the standard by which we go because there is no other standard provider, is that there is no difficulty with any foundations in Ireland at present. The scientific work is now under way but until that is complete, the foundations cannot be included in the provisions. That is the way the Government works and if it did not, there would be many other issues.

I raise the matter of the demolition of houses after remedial works have been granted or requested by an engineer. When such work is being undertaken, if it is found that the blockwork has deteriorated to an extent that requires demolition, demolition is not included under the Bill and the house may deteriorate further in the medium term. We need a provision on that.

There are many other issues I wish to raise, which I will do during the moving of amendments in the next Stages of the Bill. I want to get this Bill under way, because many people want to get their houses and lives back in order. While it does not include every provision that I would like, it is as much as we can get at the moment.