Draft legislation to establish a €2.5 billion scheme to fix defective Celtic Tiger-era apartment blocks will be published in “early 2024″, with the scheme due to be in place “shortly thereafter”, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.
Mr Varadkar told the Dáil he was “personally affected” by building defects as were “other members of the Cabinet”.
The Taoiseach previously disclosed that an apartment he owned in Castleknock, west Dublin was in a building with defects. “While I will not be claiming from the scheme personally, the owner’s management company might, and I could be an indirect beneficiary in that regard,” he said last January.
Speaking during Leaders’ Questions on Wednesday, Mr Varadkar said Government intervention was required, with tens of thousands of people around the country affected by such building defects.
He said the Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien was working on legislation as “a matter of priority”.
The Taoiseach said sufficient time was required to draft the legislation to ensure the scheme was “fit for purpose, provides value for taxpayers and contains appropriate oversight and governance measures”.
Mr Varadkar was responding to Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, who said the Minister for Housing had promised in January that emergency funding would be available this year and legislation underpinning the redress scheme would be published before the end of 2023.
“We have five weeks left in the Dáil calendar and there has been no emergency funding, no legislation has been published,” she said. “So when will that funding be available, when will we see the legislation and when will the full redress scheme be open for applications?”
Ms McDonald said there could be no excuse for delays with emergency funding as families were living in homes that were not safe, adding “Minister O’Brien would want to get the finger out now”.
She said those responsible were in the first instance the builders and developers who ignored basic fire safety and building standards but the State also had a responsibility because “light touch regulation and a lack of independent local authority inspection allowed this to happen”.
The Dublin Central TD mentioned a couple, Gary and Lorraine, who had bought their “dream home” in Ennis, Co Clare when they retired. “They looked forward to their life free from debt after decades of hard work but after they moved in defects were discovered and they now face bills running into tens of thousands of euros in their retirement,” she said.
“In my own constituency, there are hundreds of apartments in the Ivy Exchange on Parnell Street, where homeowners face bills of anything up to €80,000 for defects for which they bear no responsibility.”
Ms McDonald also said that when defects were discovered at an apartment complex in Citywest, the insurance company for the apartments had pushed up premiums year-on-year from €30,000 to €190,000, “with homeowners left to foot that bill”.
“The insurance company now threatens to walk away completely, a really frightening prospect,” she added.
Mr Varadkar also said the scale of defects in apartments and duplexes was “significant”. He said it was estimated that of apartments, duplexes, or associated common areas constructed between 1991 and 2013, the number that may be affected by one or more fire safety, structural safety or water ingress defects was likely to range between 50 and 80 per cent.
He said this equated to between 60,000 and 100,000 apartments and duplexes, with an average cost of about €25,000 per unit and a potential cost to the Exchequer of between €1.5 billion and €2.5 billion.
