Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. As he is aware, we have problems across the country with apartment defects. More than 100,000 apartments are affected by defects and the Government announced a remediation scheme some time ago. While it has been slow in commencing, a portal was opened last December for submissions for interim funding as we await the Bill for the overall remediation scheme. The interim funding piece is for cases such as a block like Park West, which is being represented by Sam and Odette Doran of the Not Our Fault campaign, where they have made sure that all the surveys have been carried out and everything is done. They are engaging with the fire officer and are doing a fantastic job, and hopefully they will be the first to draw down from that scheme. Because they are so far advanced, they provide support services and advice to other owner-management companies and that has thrown up a major problem with the Multi-Unit Developments Act 2011.

It was agreed as a priority that the Multi-Unit Developments Act 2011 needed serious reform. It was very good legislation at the time but the lived experience has rendered outdated an awful lot of its provisions. This interim scheme has shown that you have management agents charging fees for the administration of the remediation scheme and therefore less money is going back to owners who are affected by it. A situation can arise where only some have paid for the survey and only some should be getting back money and the question is how do you administer that. Owner-management companies are in the main run by volunteers. Other issues that arise are owner-management companies or management agents planning to hold on to the moneys from the remediation scheme and perhaps using it to upgrade to today's standards instead of the requirements within the scheme.

Some have paid out money in good faith and are expecting to receive that money back from the Government. If the Government decide to only pay it to the owner-management company, if that owner-management company is dominated by institutional landlords or even approved housing bodies, because they have a vote for every unit rather than just one entity one vote, they can often outvote the owner-occupiers within schemes. The need for a regulator is very clear and that regulator, it is proposed, would need to come in under the multi-unit development reform amendment Bill that is due. Although all of this is all Department of housing discussion, the legislation for it and enforcement of it is within the remit of the Department of Justice. Hence, it has taken me a somewhat circuitous route to find myself in front of the Minister of State here.

What is needed is a regulator that will be a source of information and resources, that will be a point of appeal for owner-managers and can be an arbitrator where there are disputes. They can perhaps be a conduit, along with the Housing Agency who are administering this scheme. Let us say you have 30 owners in a scheme who have paid in, that money could be paid to a solicitor for the owner-management company through this regulator that would then ensure that that solicitor, in the same way as we have with conveyancing, undertakes to distribute those moneys to the owners who have paid in good faith with the residual amount then going to the management company. That can be done through an undertaking from a solicitor.Look at Park West where they have really led the way. They do not have those problems because they happen to have Sam Doran there who is very experienced. Not every development has that.