I welcome the Minister, Deputy Browne, and his team from the Department.

Amendment No. 9 in the names of Senators Cosgrove, Harmon, Stephenson and Noonan has been ruled out of order.

Amendments Nos. 10 and 11 have been ruled out of order. Amendment No. 12 is in the names of Senators McCormack, Murphy, Collins, Ryan, Tully and Andrews but none of them is here to move it.

Amendments Nos. 13 to 15, inclusive, have been ruled out of order.

I am sorry but do we need a quorum? Do we not need a quorum to start? Should there not be five?

Would the Senator like a quorum call?

I am a bit concerned I might have missed my amendments. I did not realise it was starting an hour earlier.

As it stands, this section appears to permit side-by-side housing only where there is a visible physical disability and the relevant dwelling was adapted for the accommodation of a person who has a disability, while failing to take account of people with non-visible cognitive, neurological or age-related disabilities, including advanced dementia. This approach raises serious concerns in relation to compliance with disability and equality legislation, most notably the Disability Act 2005. Under that Act, public bodies are obliged to promote equal access to services and supports for persons with disabilities, ensure that people with disabilities are not discriminated against on the basis of the nature or visibility of their disability and provide reasonable accommodation to enable a person with a disability to live with dignity and autonomy. The side-by-side policy appears to be in direct conflict with these principles.

I wish to draw the Minister's attention to a particularly distressing and urgent case which highlights the inadequacy of the current approach.

I spoke at length to a distressed man this week. He told me about an elderly woman with advanced dementia who is living in her long-established family home due to the severity of her condition. It is clinically recognised that she must remain in familiar surroundings to avoid significant cognitive and psychological deterioration. Disruption, relocation or institutionalisation would be deeply distressing and harmful. Her sibling, who is her primary carer, owns adjoining land where a side-by-side dwelling could be constructed that would allow him to take care of her while preserving her safety, dignity and well-being. However, permission for a side-by-side development may be refused on the apparent basis that dementia is not considered an eligible disability under the current interpretation. The condition is not visible, and the proposal does not fit the narrow definition of an adapted house.

This is very worrying and this position is wholly untenable. The situation is compounded by the fact that the existing house is so structurally damaged that it will not survive another winter. The family has no viable option to remain there. As a last resort, they explored the possibility of placing a mobile home on the land. However, following an assessment by the woman's medical team, her brother was informed that the mobile home is not suitable for her medical and care needs. This leaves a deeply troubling question. What exactly is this family supposed to do? By restricting side-by-side developments to certain categories of disability, the current policy discriminates against people with non-visible and cognitive disabilities, contrary to the Disability Act 2005, ignores well-established medical evidence regarding dementia care, undermines the principles of reasonable accommodation and proportionality and places vulnerable individuals at risk of unnecessary institutionalisation or severe harm.

Dementia is a recognised disability under Irish law and the international human rights framework. Any planning or housing policy that excludes it explicitly, or in practice, is fundamentally flawed. The current interpretation of the side-by-side housing amendment may be constitutionally vulnerably as applied, having regard to Articles 40, 41 and 43 of Bunreacht na hÉireann, particularly when read in conjunction with the Disability Act 2005.

The exclusion of persons with non-visible disabilities, such as advanced dementia, raises issues of equality, proportionality and the State's obligation to vindicate personal and family rights.

As the Níl side is not providing tellers, the question is carried.

This section is trying to convert the State's failure into a financial burden on homeowners. The families affected are not simply seeking compensation. They are seeking safe, habitable homes that the State should have ensured were compliant from the start. They have done absolutely everything right. They have worked hard and saved for their homes and now they are just falling down around them. After decades of regulatory neglect it is disgraceful to suggest that homeowners should carry any additional charge. The law should correct the failure, not penalise the victims. Any scheme that allows local authorities to impose charges on families who have already suffered the impact of their homes crumbling before their eyes is just wrong, unjust, unnecessary and morally questionable. The focus must be on restoring their homes, not creating mechanisms to recoup costs from those who have already borne the brunt of the consequences of the State's failure to regulate. We cannot forget how we got to this point. Homeowners should be assisted without fear of retroactive charges, delays and unnecessary administrative hurdles. We have to make it clear that the State's obligation is to fix what is broken, not to profit from its own failings. The consequences should be clearly laid where the responsibility is held. The section shifts the burden away from the State and onto ordinary families. That is why I strongly oppose it.

I fully support Senator Black and her work on all of these amendments. At the end of the day, we are very familiar with the term 100% redress. That is what people are entitled to. This defective concrete block system results from the light-touch regulation of successive Governments going back a long time. Innocent people who set out to realise their ambition to provide a home for themselves in the county they love and want to work and live in have found themselves in this situation. I cannot support anything that dilutes or waters down 100% redress to people who should be entitled to it. It is as simple as that. I am not going to spend time on it because I know the Minister is under pressure - we are under pressure too; we have a lot of business to do and there are many things on the political agenda for a lot of people here tonight - but at the end of the day people set out to do the noble thing, that is, to provide themselves with a home, to go into debt to build a home or pay a developer, builder or construction company to build a home, and those people now find that part or all of their home is crumbling. We have to step in because it would not have happened if we had proper regulation in place. Anything less than that is unfair. We saw the political consequences of it. We saw the shift of support to different political groupings, including the four 100% Redress councillors and the one 100% Redress TD. We also saw the shift in the dynamic of the main political parties, particularly in Donegal but also in Mayo and other places. I am not going to labour the point because the people who know about it are clued in. They have the lived experience. It is really important and I support what Senator Black is trying to do.

The charging order under the defective concrete blocks grant scheme for rental properties is required to help ensure remediated properties remain available to rent while remediation works have completed. The addition of a second charging order is to allow designated local authorities to ensure the charged amount matches the total funding provided to homeowners under the grant scheme. As the Bill provides for an increased grant, it may arise that the homeowners receive additional funding over and above the first charged amount. Therefore, this action is necessary for the operation of a second charging order.

Amendments Nos. 16 and 17 are related and may be discussed together by agreement. Is that agreed? Agreed.

I move amendment No. 16:

In page 29, between lines 33 and 34, to insert the following:

“(c) by the insertion of the following subsection after subsection (13):

“(14) The Appeals Board shall publish, in anonymised form, every decision made under this Part within 90 days of the decision. Such publication shall include the facts, issues, reasoning, statutory interpretation and final outcome.”.”.

Amendment No. 16 would ensure that every decision made by the appeals board must be published in an anonymised form within 90 days, showing the facts, reasoning and outcomes. Homeowners are trapped in appeals that can last for years while the Housing Agency hides behind claims of independence. The appeals board is also shirking its responsibilities by passing the buck between it and the Housing Agency while operating in secrecy.

This amendment would set clear deadlines for the publication of decisions made by the appeals board. It implements transparency where there is currently none. It will address the uncertainty that is plaguing families because the system seems unaccountable and utterly opaque. Homeowners deserve to see how decisions on appeals are made. I do not understand what is achieved by hiding these decisions. After all, what people affected by this crisis have been through is off the Richter scale, to be fair. They do not deserve this secrecy and these delays without any real explanation.

Amendment No. 17 is a very similar amendment. Like Senator Black said, it would strengthen the appeal system. It would require the appeals board to annul and replace a decision when an error of law or fact has occurred. Under the 2022 Act, the appeals board can either annul the decision or refer it to the local authority or Housing Agency for consideration. This asks families who have already been through so much to fight battles and get decisions right. If a decision is wrong, it is wrong and the appeals process should address that. Families who are going through this through no fault of their own should not have to go through these hoops. This common-sense change would end one barrier faced by a lot of families. I hope the Government will accept the amendment.

I want to briefly mention amendments Nos. 13 and 15 that were ruled out of order. These amendments simply sought to recognise homeowners affected-----

We are on amendment No. 16.

I know we are on amendment No. 16, but amendments Nos. 13 and 15 were ruled out of order and I want to mention them and why they were so important. Ruling them out of order sends a very clear message to families that it does not matter if their home is crumbling around them because it is the timing that determines whether they are recognised.

We have been repeatedly told that there has been significant progress under the enhanced defective concrete block scheme, but when you look at the facts, that claim falls apart. While 229 homes are listed as completed, only 121 received the correct science-based solution, namely, full demolition and rebuild required. Nearly half of those homes, 108 in total, were given partial or mixed repairs. These fixes are now widely accepted to be inadequate and may need to be redone in the future. Families accepted them because they had no other option. Since the scheme began in July 2023, just 229 homes have been remediated in Donegal. If even a conservative estimate of 20,000 homes ultimately need to be rebuilt, at this pace it would take more than 200 years. This is a crisis that is being handed down from one generation to the next.

The amendments that have been ruled out of order also matter because early movers have been left behind. The 8.7% grant increase, based on March 2024 construction costs, was already out of date when it became law. The previous housing Minister promised people would not be left behind, yet 43 homeowners now find themselves excluded and abandoned. It is incredibly disappointing that these amendments were ruled out of order and the Government is unwilling to recognise the suffering and hardship people endure unless it happened after 29 March 2024. I will reiterate the point I made on Thursday, that there needs to be an investigation and a public inquiry into what has happened with defective concrete blocks.

Amendment No. 16 proposes to insert a new subsection that mandates the appeals panel to publish certain anonymised information to pertaining to the decisions it makes. I very much want the appeals panel focused on the decision-making process for appellants and to make those decisions as quickly as possible. Statistics around the work of the appeals panel are under review and, where appropriate, will be published in due course.

The appeals panel is statutorily independent of the Department and Minister. It is a matter for it, in the first instance, regarding the information it provides. I understand it is open to considering how it communicates its work. The Department stands ready to assist and fund this if required, including, for example, the use of a bespoke appeals process panel website. However, for now, I understand the panel is quite rightly concerned about improving the speed with which it can issue decisions to homeowners and is concentrating its efforts on this.

Amendment No. 17 proposes to insert a subsection in the Bill to replace subsection (10) in the principal Act. The proposed amendment would modify the text in subsection (10)(b) by removing the requirement of the principal Act in respect of a series of minor errors by the designated local authority or the Housing Agency which, when taken together, amount to a serious or significant error of law. It would also remove the ability of the appeals board to direct the designated local authority or Housing Agency, as the case may be, to reconsider its decisions in accordance with such directions as the appeals board may consider appropriate. This ability is required to ensure, where the appeals board believes it is useful to direct its consideration, that is permitted under the principal Act. Therefore, I cannot accept these amendments.

I move amendment No. 17:

In page 29, between lines 33 and 34, to insert the following:

“(2) Section 39 of the Principal Act is amended by the substitution of the following subsection for subsection (10):

“(10) Following consideration of the appeal, the Appeals Board—

(a) affirm the decision the subject of the appeal, or

(b) where the Appeals Board considers that an error of law or fact which detrimentally affected the party who made the appeal was made by the designated local authority or the Housing Agency, annul the decision and replace it with such other decision as it considers it appropriate to make in accordance with this Act.”.”.

A Member did not vote and the record has been amended, with the agreement of the Whips, to show the following: Tá, 17; Níl, 31. The amendment is defeated.

I move amendment No. 18:

In page 29, between lines 33 and 34, to insert the following:

"Amendment of section 41 of Principal Act 29.

29.Section 41 of the Principal Act is amended by the insertion of the following subsection after subsection (2):

"(3) The Minister shall, annually, publish a report summarising data received from local authorities and the Housing Agency relating to:

(a) deleterious materials detected in dwellings (including, but not limited to, pyrrhotite, pyrite, total sulphur, and mica), 4

(b) regional patterns in material failure,

(c) emerging risks requiring attention, and

(d) international comparisons.".".

Amendment No. 18 is necessary because the Minister must make public how deleterious materials are detected where problems are occurring and what risks are emerging. There is a need to be proactive in identifying these risks, and that is where this amendment comes in. Publishing regional patterns and international comparisons could help to prevent repeated mistakes, allow for early intervention and build trust that the scheme is operating fairly and scientifically. It would really help to illustrate clearly that decisions are based on evidence, not just guesswork, and provide much-needed transparency for homeowners who are directly affected.

Amendment No. 18 proposes an amendment to mandate the production of an annual report that summarises the technical data that may be held by designated local authorities or the Housing Agency. Information of this nature does not relate to the operation of the grant scheme under the principal Act, and for this reason I cannot support this amendment.

Amendments Nos. 19 to 21, inclusive, are related and may be discussed together, by agreement. Is that agreed? Agreed.

I move amendment No. 19:

In page 30, to delete lines 4 to 18 and substitute the following:

" "(3A) The SEAI may share information with a designated local authority solely for the purposes of administrative verification of applications under this Act and not for the purpose of reducing or offsetting any grant payable under this Act, where it is necessary and proportionate to establish the funding which has been provided, or is to be provided by, the SEAI to a person who has made an application under section 13, 17A, or 23A, as the case may be.

(3B) The information referred to in subsection (3A) may include only:

(a) a relevant owner’s name and address;

(b) the address and Eircode of a relevant dwelling;

(c) the meter point reference number assigned to an electricity account in the relevant dwelling;

(d) confirmation that an application for funding has been made by a relevant owner to the SEAI;

(e) the purpose of funding provided, or to be provided, by a relevant owner; but shall not include any detail which may be used to reduce, offset, or otherwise limit any grant under this Act.".".

Amendment No. 19 is essential because it protects homeowners from the use of information they may have previously given to the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, to covertly reduce their remediation grants from the State. It makes clear that SEAI data shared with local authorities can be used only to verify applications and not to limit or offset grants for remediation. It also strictly limits the type of information that can be shared, addressing both privacy concerns and GDPR compliance, while ensuring homeowners retain full entitlement to the support promised under the principal Act.

Amendments Nos. 20 and 21 both reinforce this financial protection for homeowners by making it explicit that any funding from the SEAI cannot reduce, replace, offset or otherwise limit their entitlement under the defective concrete block grant scheme. For affected homeowners to have full confidence in this scheme, it is important that they not be punished unnecessarily for grants awarded that are entirely unrelated to the regulatory failings of the State.

These amendments remove ambiguity and prevent the State from cutting supports to homeowners that they are legally owed.

The proposed subsection (3A) in amendment No. 19 states that the purpose should be for administrative verification and not for reducing or offsetting any grant payable under the principal Act. I confirm the amendment contained in the Bill does not relate to reducing grant payments under the principal Act. The purpose of the amendment in the Bill is solely to assist the SEAI in ensuring it does not double fund payments made under its energy retrofit scheme.

Similarly, with amendment No. 20, the amendment contained in the Bill does not relate to reducing grant payments under the principal Act. The purpose of the amendment in the Bill is to assist the SEAI in ensuring it does not double fund payments under its energy retrofit schemes.

Amendment No. 21 proposes, by way of an insertion to section 47 of the principal Act, that the information obtained by the SEAI cannot be used to reduce grants determined under the principal Act. Again, as set out in amendments Nos. 19 and 20, the amendment contained in the Bill does not relate to reducing grant payments under the principal Act. Rather, the purpose of the amendment in the Bill is to assist the SEAI in ensuring it does not double fund payments made under its energy retrofit scheme. In those circumstances, I cannot accept these amendments.

I move amendment No. 20:

In page 30, between lines 18 and 19, to insert the following:

“(3C) SEAI funding cannot be used to reduce, replace, offset, or otherwise diminish a person’s entitlement under the Defective Concrete Block Grant Scheme.”.”.

I move amendment No. 21:

In page 30, between lines 18 and 19, to insert the following:

“(3C) Notwithstanding any provision of this Act, information shared by the SEAI under this section shall not be used to reduce, offset, or otherwise limit any grant payable to a relevant owner under this Act.”.”.

I move amendment No. 22:

In page 30, between lines 28 and 29, to insert the following:

“Amendment of section 51 of Principal Act

31. Section 51 of the Principal Act is amended by the insertion of the following subsection after subsection (2):

“(3) Without prejudice to subsection (1), on the passing of the Remediation of Dwellings Damaged by the Use of Defective Concrete Blocks (Amendment) Act 2025 the Minister shall commence, and shall within 6 months complete, a review of the need to designate additional local authorities or additional designated local authority areas under section 5 of the Principal Act and, not later than 3 months after the completion of the review, shall make a report to each House of the Oireachtas of his or her findings and conclusions resulting from that review.”.”.

Moving this amendment, I would like to briefly speak about what is not contained in the Bill but should be, that is, an extension of the geographic scope of the scheme. As all Members know, the 2022 Act designated counties Clare, Donegal, Limerick and Mayo and allowed the Government to designate additional counties by order, as occurred in Sligo in 2024. As we heard on Second Stage, the Government will now move to extend the scheme to Fingal and Wexford. That is welcome but it has taken almost four years to get these affected areas on to the scheme.

These piecemeal changes underline the arbitrary, incremental, half-measure approach that runs through so much of this scheme, and both the Act and this Bill. Many of us in the House who have spoken on the Bill know that the western coast from Donegal to Limerick has borne the brunt of the crisis. I, like many of my colleagues, have seen the devastation up close in places like Sligo and Donegal. Equally, we know that these blocks can be found across the country, as the Government is now acknowledging by making the provision for Fingal and Wexford. With the lack of testing to date, it is possible that further cases will emerge over the coming years. The patchy coverage of the scheme risks creating a postcode lottery where those outside predesignated counties will need to fight, campaign and struggle to have their counties added, which has been the case all down the west coast counties already.

This Bill and section could have extended the coverage for the purpose of the scheme to be for the entire State, which makes sense. Why not? It is a simple common-sense approach but, instead, we see more half-hearted, piecemeal changes fiddling at the margins of the scheme that simply do not work. Our amendment would require the Government to face it head on and look properly and carefully at the implications of extending the geographical scope of the scheme to include the entire country.

I understand the Senators have moved amendment No. 22 to ensure that no homeowner is denied access to the scheme on the basis that their dwelling is not located in a designated local authority area. Section 5 of the principal Act contains a pathway for other local authority areas to gain access to the scheme as required. Indeed, further local authority areas are soon to be designated under the scheme using this pathway. This process has worked for Sligo which was designated under the scheme last year. Subject to Government approval, I will partly designate two further local authorities very shortly.

Furthermore, section 51 of the principal Act already contains provisions with timelines to undertake a review of the operation of the Act. This review must begin by July 2026, which is two years after the Act was commenced in 2023.

Regarding amendment No. 23, as Senators will be aware, the defective concrete blocks grant scheme information is not a compensation scheme and the charge of order under the defective concrete blocks grant scheme for rental properties is required to help ensure remediated properties remain available to rent once remediation works are completed. Officials in the Department, with the assistance of various stakeholder groups, have worked in recent years with key stakeholders to help to ensure that matters relating to homes affected by defective concrete blocks with mortgages have been addressed.

For these reasons, I cannot accept the amendments.

As the time permitted for this debate has expired, I am required to put the following question in accordance with an order of the Seanad of this day: "In respect of each of the sections undisposed of, the section is hereby agreed to in Committee, the Title is hereby agreed to in Committee, the Bill is accordingly reported to the House without amendment, Fourth Stage is hereby completed, the Bill is hereby received for final consideration and the Bill is hereby passed."