Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy is aware I commenced the Remediation of Dwellings Damaged by the Use of Defective Concrete Blocks Act 2022 (the Act) on 22 June 2023, which provides for the enhanced grant scheme, and adopted the related Regulations on 29 June 2023.

A total of 1,880 applications have been submitted to the Defective Concrete Blocks Grant Scheme (Enhanced and previous) since its launch in June 2020 and of these 1,880 applications, 1,644 relate to the previous scheme that have to be processed under transitional arrangements as set down in the 2022 Act.

When the Scheme launched all existing applications had to be moved or ‘transitioned’ over to the new Scheme. The Government Decision sanctioning the terms and conditions of the Enhanced Scheme made it clear that applicants under the previous 2020 Grant Scheme would not be disadvantaged from being early movers. They would benefit retrospectively from the increased grant amounts and allowances being made available under the Enhanced scheme. In many cases this required applicants to submit additional information in order to benefit from the enhancements. As a result, much of the work of local authorities in Donegal and Mayo in the first six months of the Scheme has centred on revising and modifying these original applications.