It is nearly a year since the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government published the Safe as Houses report, which recommended that the Government set up a scheme to remediate legacy defects in residential buildings. The Dáil called for same when it passed a Green Party motion in June 2017. Some affected homeowners from my constituency in Dublin Rathdown are currently outside Leinster House, marking another year with no movement from the Government on this issue.

When I raised the matter with the Taoiseach in October, he said that the Minister of State, Deputy English, was examining proposals and he admitted that there must be an understanding of the extent of the defects across the country so that such proposals could be drawn up. Has the Government made any moves towards investigating the extent of the latent defects in residential housing, with a view to drawing up a plan for practical State reliefs along the lines recommended in the Safe as Houses report and the Green Party motion on building standards or are the homeowners to remain abandoned by the Government?

The Minister of State, Deputy English, and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, are still examining this matter, which affects some developments in my constituency as well. The primary difficulty in all of this is that if the State, in effect the taxpayer, were to take on the liability for repairing defects in private homes and buildings, the costs could run into many billions of euro, which would then have to be taken out of other budgets, whether for social housing, health or through massive tax increases or action on climate change. That is the reality of the situation.

There are other proposals.

The Taoiseach should be allowed to speak without interruption.

If the Deputy has an accurate cost that she can stand over, I would be happy to see it.