Yesterday, the Cabinet approved the defective concrete block remediation Bill. After months of delay, homeowners affected by pyrite, mica and pyrrhotite have sight of the Government's intentions. Tomorrow, the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage will sit for six hours to scrutinise the general scheme of the Bill. We will hear from homeowners, experts and officials. It is disappointing that the full Bill has not yet been published in advance of that meeting and it is concerning that the Government is allowing just three weeks for the legislation's passage. It is a complicated Bill that comes with a price tag possibly exceeding €3 billion and there is a concern that the Government will not afford adequate time for full committee consideration of the Bill over the next number of weeks. This concern is shared by homeowners, and it should concern the taxpayers, who are being asked to foot the bill.

No Deputy wants to delay the passage of the legislation, but surely we all want to get it right. As it stands, the legislation is not fit for purpose. It is defective. Like the homes it promises to fix, it is filled with cracks and holes and stands on weak foundations. It will not provide 100% redress for many homeowners. The formula for calculating costs is deeply flawed. The proposals for addressing cost inflation are wholly inadequate. The exclusion of foundations is contrary to the science. There are no mechanisms for penalty-free downsizing. There is no clarity on meeting current building and energy efficiency regulations. There are concerns that homeowners will be denied demolition and rebuilding even where that is the most sensible option. There are fears that the damage threshold will exclude many affected households. There are concerns that the appeals process may not be fully independent.

Just as the Bill has been delayed, many are worried that the subsequent regulations will be, too, meaning that the new scheme may not be open and available for applications until 2023. I wonder why the review of Irish Standard, IS, 465:2018, which underpins the scheme, will not be concluded in parallel with the Bill, if it will also be delayed and whether it will address key issues such as, for example, foundations and pyrrhotite. These are all genuine concerns expressed in recent days by affected homeowners, families who have lived in the most appalling and stressful of conditions for more than a decade, who have been repeatedly failed by Governments and who are urging all of us to work together to get the Bill right.

Ultimately, responsibility for defective buildings lies with industry - rogue quarries, block manufacturers and, in other cases, contractors - but the Government is also to blame. Light-touch regulation introduced by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in the 1980s and 1990s created the context in which such rogue operators could survive and flourish. Thankfully, we now have the opportunity to clean up that mess, do right by homeowners and, crucially, deliver 100% redress.

My question is simple. Will the Minister commit to working with all of us on the committee over the next three and a half weeks to ensure that we address all of these issues and give the homeowners in the affected counties the redress scheme that they desperately need and rightly deserve?

Hear, hear.

I thank the Deputy for his question and for raising the important issue of defective blocks. As he rightly stated, the Bill is detailed and complex legislation. By the way, it has not been delayed. There has been weekly, if not daily, engagement with homeowners and I have endeavoured to engage with Opposition parties. I wrote to the Deputy directly with many detailed questions a number of months ago that he publicly committed to responding to, which he has not done. That is his wont, which is okay.

Let us consider the scheme's fundamentals. There will be 100% redress. We have upped the cap from €247,500 to €420,000. We have allowed significant additional costs such as storage and rental. We have also removed the barrier to accessing the scheme, for which homeowners were paying up to €6,000 or €7,000 heretofore. Those payments have been refunded to most of those who paid them and we are reducing the cost to approximately €500.

I will of course work with all Opposition parties. I am glad that Deputy Ó Broin is now engaging, although somewhat delayed. This is important legislation and, to be fair to the committee, it has taken a sensible approach to it by ensuring that there will be a meeting tomorrow with the affected homeowners group as well as experts in the field in order to get their views. I have received those views right the way through the process. As the Deputy knows, Mr. John O'Connor, the former chief executive of the Housing Agency and the designated liaison between the residents and me, met the homeowners group on the day last week when I brought the first memorandum to the Government.

The scheme is greatly improved. It needs to be grounded in legislation. The previous scheme, to which all parties, including the Deputy's, gave a guarded welcome in 2020, was insufficient. I gave a commitment to homeowners in all affected counties and others that may be affected that we would greatly improve the scheme, provide 100% redress not only for a principal private residence, but for one other property that was registered with the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, examine the guarantee, which will now be 40 years, and allow a second home grant in order that, if options 2 to 5 are selected - the replacement of the outer leaf, inner leaf or a combination of both - a guarantee will be given by the State and a homeowner will have access to the scheme again. This is important, as is extending the guarantee to 40 years.

Regarding pyrrhotite and infill, the Deputy is raising many of his concerns without having seen the legislation. As he knows, he and other members of the committee will be receiving a detailed briefing in advance of the meetings. That has been arranged. In that space, we will endeavour to work through the process. We need the legislation passed by the summer. There is no question of anyone trying to railroad it through. It has not been delayed. Rather, we have taken on board all of the legitimate concerns and points in order to improve the scheme.

Let us be clear, in that this is a significant Government intervention to the tune of at least €2.7 billion. The Deputy may not have seen that inflationary measures are built into it whereby I as Minister or any future Minister can revert to the House over the next three years and increase the rates by a further 10%. If we see rates going the other way, that will be addressed too.

I want people to get their homes and lives back on track. I am committed to working through this legislation over the remaining weeks of this session in co-operation with Opposition parties, as well as Government Members who have been engaging on this matter, so that we have a scheme that is fit for purpose for residents in the affected counties and other counties.

People living in cracking and crumbling homes are not interested in petty political point scoring. They want us to get the legislation right. Not only have I read the general scheme, but I have had informal briefings from the Minister's officials on the content of the as yet unpublished Bill, so I am as across it as I can be without having read it.

Tomorrow, homeowners from Clare, Mayo and Donegal will present to the Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage. They will set out all of the concerns that I have just listed. They will be telling our committee that the Bill, as it stands, will not work. They will urge us and the Minister to address these concerns by way of amendment during the Bill's passage. I am asking the Minister not just to display a willingness to work through the legislation, but to commit to working with us on crafting appropriate amendments on all of the issues that I have outlined and where homeowners and scientific experts have raised legitimate concerns in order to ensure that, when the Bill passes, which I hope will be by the end of this session, it will be the right legislation to provide the right redress to the thousands of affected homeowners.

I assure the Deputy that, as I have done with all Bills that I have brought before the House, many of which I have received support for from Opposition benches, I will work through the legislation and we will consider any amendment to it as we move through the process. It is fair to say that tomorrow's meeting will give an opportunity for residents to put forward their views. There have been guarded welcomes for this scheme from some quarters. Everyone accepts that it is a greatly improved scheme, one that is founded in robust legislation.

The purpose of it coming through the Oireachtas, both Dáil and Seanad, is to seek views from Opposition parties and to look at amendments, which we will do. I was not trying to score any petty political points with the Deputy; I was simply outlining the fact that I endeavoured to engage with him earlier in this process. The Deputy gave a commitment to respond on what the Sinn Féin position was and he did not do so; that is all. Now that the Deputy is engaged I will be more than happy to do that with Sinn Féin, Labour, the Social Democrats, Independents and my Government colleagues. We can work this through to provide the basis for a greatly improved scheme that the Government has brought forward and to get the legislation passed by the summer recess so people can get on with getting their homes remediated and getting their lives back on track.