Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein)
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83. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he will provide an update on the progress of the pyrite resolution works taking place and completed at this stage and the work to monitor other sites with pyritic contamination on an ongoing basis. [25443/14]

Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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97. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the amount of funding available to remediate houses damaged by pyrite up to the end of 2015; the number of pyrite damaged houses he expects to be repaired by 31 December 2014; the number repaired by 31 December 2015; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25451/14]

Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left)
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103. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the funding available to remediate pyrite damaged houses up to the end of 2015; and the number of pyrite damaged houses he is expecting to be remediated by 31 December 2014 and by 31 December 2015. [25243/14]

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 83, 97 and 103 together.

The Pyrite Resolution Board commenced accepting applications from eligible homeowners for inclusion in the pyrite remediation scheme on 26 February 2014. As matters stand, the Board has received in the order of 500 completed applications and these are currently being processed. Each application must first be validated by the Board which involves an assessment of the application against relevant eligibility criteria and may also include an audit of the Building Condition Assessment. Approximately 185 applications have now been validated and forwarded to the Housing Agency for the next stage in the process, which is the assessment, verification and recommendation phase . The stage involves confirmation that the damage recorded in the Building Condition Assessment in respect of a dwelling is attributable to pyritic heave and may involve physical inspection of the dwelling and the testing of the hardcore material.

Following completion of this process and approval by the Board for the inclusion of dwelling(s) in the scheme the next stage involves the awarding of a contract for the works and the commencement of the remediation works. While no contracts have been awarded at this point in time the Housing Agency , which is supporting the Board in the delivery of the scheme, is close to awarding a contract in respect of a small number of dwellings.

While the Board and I are keen that the actual remediation works should commence at the earliest possible opportunity, it is inevitable that the various stages of the approval process will take a period of time to complete . It is not possible at this stage for the Board to give figures for the number of dwellings that will be remediated or in the process of remediation by the end of 20 14 or 2015 . However, the Board is committed to commencing work on as many projects as is possible in 2014 and 2015.

In October 2013 the Government approved initial funding of €10 million for the roll-out of a pyrite remediation scheme in 2014, an additional sum of €1 0 million has now been made available to fund the operation of the scheme in 2015. The post-2015 funding requirement will be dealt with at that stage having regard to developments over the next 18 months.