The residents and owners of some boom-time developments across the State are facing massive repair costs and possible eviction due to building defects. Some of these include fire-safety issues, rotting roofs and defective balconies. The people concerned have bought or rented homes in good faith, but the Government has all but ignored calls to assist them. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government published a report in January 2018 with 26 recommendations to tackle the issue of latent defects, including the establishment of a redress scheme to assist homeowners. The report received cross-party support. That redress scheme would be funded via an industry levy matched by Government funding and low-cost loans to help homeowners pay for remedial works, offering a real solution to those living in defective properties.

It is not acceptable to claim that this is a matter solely between the developer and the home purchaser since weak regulation was an underlying cause of the problem. Will the Government consider the establishment of a redress scheme for those living in defective properties? When will homeowners in Donegal and Mayo, affected by mica and pyrite, be able to access the redress scheme approved by Cabinet in November?

This is a very difficult situation for these people who must now meet a significant expense to remediate certain deficiencies in how their homes were built. It is a very stressful situation and they are trying to find assistance with that, which I understand.

Building standards were not complied with during the boom-time years. Today, unfortunately, certain politicians are looking for us to relax standards once again and to remove layers of oversight when it comes to building, but we will not do that. In 2014 the controls and regulations on building designing, architectural works, planning and the actual completion of works were greatly improved to protect people who were buying homes under this new control regime. The difficulty we have is that there is a significant risk to the taxpayer if the Government accepts liability for individual buildings or for works that were not completed in the appropriate way, while at the same time potentially letting off builders who are responsible in this matter.

Of course we want to find a pathway to help these people, but it is difficult to see one that does not take on this enormous open-ended liability on every other taxpayer in the State that the State simply could not meet.

On the second part of the Deputy's question, at the time of last year's budget agreement in principle was reached for a scheme for people in Donegal and Mayo where pyrite, pyritic heave and mica have been damaging internally the concrete blocks of buildings that were built. My Department and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform are close to completing the outline of that scheme. An amount of money has been allocated to it in 2019, but we just need to finalise the details of how the scheme will be applied in those two counties.