701. Deputy Charles Ward asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to clarify whether all transitional applicants who reach the grant cap are eligible to have their original engineers’ fees reimbursed up to €7,000, regardless of whether they exceed the cap due to the rebuild grant and the ancillary grant together, or due to reaching the cap with the rebuild grant alone; and if not if it take an administrative change in order to allow this reimbursement to take place. [64898/26]

The Remediation of Dwellings Damaged by the use of Defective Concrete Blocks Act 2022 as amended by the Act of 2025 underpins the Grant Scheme which provides grant funding to people whose homes have been affected by Defective Concrete Blocks (DCB).

A number of amendments contained in the 2025 Act came into operation on 25 February 2026 and more recently further provisions commenced on 27 May 2026.

Based on information made available to the Department, changes were made to the scheme under S.I. 225 of 2026 to provide that applicants who have reached the scheme cap may now apply to their designated local authority for reimbursement of the cost of their engineers report incurred under the previous scheme to the value of the lesser amount, between either the amount of money the applicant spent on the engineer’s report or €7,000.

My Department was recently made aware of a cohort of applications who had not reached the scheme cap but are unable to recoup these report costs. I have asked my Department to give further consideration to the specific issue raised.