Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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133. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the measures he proposes to adopt to recover the €10,000,000 allocated in the capital budget for remedial works to houses suffering major damage caused by pyrite from the quarry and construction industry and the HomeBond organisation. [53420/13]

Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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134. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he will confirm if the HomeBond technical staff that inspected homes in the Dublin West constituency (details supplied) and incorrectly found that structural damage was not due to pyrite will not be involved in auditing building condition assessments under IS398-1. [53421/13]

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 133 and 134 together.

The Pyrite Resolution Board is in discussions with HomeBond with a view to agreeing an open and transparent process for them to make a positive contribution to the implementation of a pyrite remediation scheme.

I have made my position very clear on the issue of responsibility for providing a resolution of the pyrite problem for affected homeowners. I believe that the parties identified in the report of the independent Pyrite Panel as having a direct or indirect responsibility for the pyrite problem should contribute to the resolution of the problem. It was against this background that I engaged in protracted discussions with the key stakeholders to try and put in place a framework within which those parties could bring about a resolution of the problem through an industry-led response which would include appropriate funding arrangements; regrettably, this did not prove possible. In the absence of such agreement the Government approved, in April 2013, the funding of a pyrite remediation scheme through the imposition of mandatory levies on the construction and insurance sectors . Unfortunately, due to legal difficulties it was not possible to proceed on the basis of those proposals and the Government has recently approved Exchequer funding for the scheme. The Bill to provide for the establishment of the Pyrite Resolution Board on a statutory basis and for the operation of the pyrite remediation scheme will be published in the next few days and I intend to bring it to the Oireachtas next week.

The auditing of the Building Condition Assessment process is an operational matter and as such it is a matter for the Pyrite Resolution Board to determine the appropriate process that should be put in place for this purpose.