Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am rising today to again ask that we have statements in this House on the apartment defects remediation scheme.

The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, has an awful lot of good news to share with this House of huge developments and input progress over the last few years. Most recently, he brought a memo to Cabinet for the drafting of the statutory scheme and apartment complexes around the country have been able to apply for the interim scheme. There is a pathfinder project of how to do it correctly. Extraordinary leadership has been shown by Sam and Odette Doran who are part of the Not Our Fault campaign. They have led the way in how to access the interim funding through the Park West complex.

Not every complex or development has a Sam and Odette Doran; they have been fastidious when it comes to attention to detail in filling out statements and questionnaires, and dealing with the fire officer and all sorts, comprising hundreds of pages. There are other complexes throughout my home constituency of Dublin South-Central that have owner management companies where there are difficulties such as people being charged levies or extra costs. I think that the Minister has actual answers to things like that and has a lot of this well thought through. However, I want the opportunity for that to be fleshed out and for those things to be heard because this Government has done a lot in this space to assist the apartment owners. This is probably the sixth time I have asked for statements so we really need to have them. It is not that there is anything uncomfortable about it. There really is not. It is all really one good news story after another of all that we are doing to assist any hangovers from those Celtic tiger developments. The likes of the Park West complex was initially presented with a bill of €68,500 per apartment. We are now at a situation where those individual works will not be included so it is really important that we have statements.