My question is for the Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy English, and relates to the lack of progress on the establishment of a mica redress scheme for the 5,000 home owners in Donegal whose houses are affected by mica in defective blocks. The Government has treated these homeowners disgracefully. Next Tuesday marks the first anniversary of an announcement that a scheme would be established and €25 million provided. The promise at that time was that the scheme's terms and conditions would be finalised and published by last Christmas, with work beginning on repairing the homes at the start of this year. As of now the scheme's terms still have not been published. It is absolutely unacceptable. Can the Minister update the House today on when the scheme's terms will be published, when homes will be fixed and if additional funding will be provided in the budget to accompany the €25 million fund announced last year, not one euro of which has been spent yet?

I sent a letter to Deputy McConalogue today on this matter so I will give him a short answer now. We agreed last year to allocate money in order to show our commitment to addressing this issue, to be fair to all of the homeowners affected. We did that, even though the scheme was not fully worked out at that stage. That work has been ongoing since then. As the Deputy knows, there have been some very good meetings between officials in the Department and the local authorities in Donegal and Mayo about the finer details of the scheme. That work is very close to its conclusion and the scheme will be able to start in the weeks ahead. That work had to go on and the Deputy was well aware that last year when the money was allocated that the scheme was not fully ready but we wanted to make sure that the money was there so that we could begin work.