I will now address Amendment No. 8, which was tabled by Deputies Ó Broin, Doherty, McGettigan, Conway-Walsh and Mac Lochlainn. I take the points made by the Deputies that there is an urgent need to increase capacity throughout the country. There is also an urgent need to increase affordability in the housing sector and to increase capacity in the private rental sector and the rental sector in general. This is obviously a very acute issue, particularly in Donegal, which is obviously the county most affected by defec…

I was not reading from a script. Deputy Doherty mentioned, in the example he provided, that perhaps a policy instruction came from the Department of justice and that the Department of Finance legislated for it. The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage is legislating in this instance, and there may be policy discussions. Quite often in the context of housing policies we suggest taxation measures. However, those measures are always legislated for by the Department of Finance. We are here dealing with …

There were accusations of a lack of political leadership and I have to dispute that. Since the Minister took up the position his focus has been on increasing supply and increasing viability. In the ten or so months he has been in the position he has introduced a range of policy measures and legislation to do that. I know this legislation was also a priority. I am sure Sinn Féin could have drafted the Bill in a number of hours but these Bills have to withstand scrutiny so it is not as simple as the Deputy says. The …

I had to dispute that. Again, what is being asked for here is a taxation measure and to speak to the amendment, it is something we cannot deal with here.

I move amendment No. 13: In page 6, between lines 2 and 3, to insert the following: “Interpretation ( Part 2 ) 3. In this Part, “Principal Act” means the Remediation of Dwellings Damaged by the Use of Defective Concrete Blocks Act 2022.”.

The amendment proposes to insert a new section into the Bill that would amend section 3 of the principal Act. Section 3 relates to regulations made under the principal Act. I understand the Deputy is seeking to mandate an online portal to make the documents relating to the scheme available online. I am satisfied this information is already accessible online through web pages managed by my Department and those operated by designated local authorities and therefore I cannot accept the amendment.

I propose to deal with amendments Nos. 16, 50, 55 and 56 as tabled by Deputy Ward. Amendment No. 16 proposes to replace text in section 5 of the Principal Act. It will require designated local authorities to publish statistics on a quarterly basis under various headings. My Department already maintains and publishes statistics relating to the scheme, updated on a monthly basis on its DCB webpage. Any additional statistics required on foot of amendments contained in this Bill will be considered, where appropriate, a…

I move amendment No. 20: In page 7, between lines 3 and 4, to insert the following: “Damage threshold for attached dwellings 7. The Principal Act is amended by the insertion of the following section after section 15: “15A. (1) Where a determination is made under section 15(1)(b) that a relevant dwelling does not meet the damage threshold, the relevant owner may make a notification under subsection (2) where— (a) the relevant dwelling is— (i) terraced or semi-detached, and (ii) connected to another relevant dwelling…

I am glad Deputy Mac Lochlainn referenced the fine Government TDs that we have in Donegal. Deputies Gallagher and McConalogue are speaking to the same constituents the Deputy is speaking to. They are listening, they are hearing them and they represent them. The Opposition does not have a monopoly on how they represent the people of Donegal and those impacted by defective blocks. The Government Deputies would have addressed the fact that there are anomalies and the scheme is too restrictive when it comes to conjoine…

That is important. It allows flexibility and assistance where it is needed. That is simply what the amendment does.

Where did the Deputy get that from?

I never said that.

I appreciate all the kind invitations to Donegal. It must be the second most beautiful county in the country.

On a serious note, in fairness, Deputy Ward has lived through this and understands. I certainly do not intend to get into the minutiae and discuss various cases. A plethora of potential situations have been raised by Deputies, but the simple way to explain things is that the amendment attempts to address what we were told was rigidity in the scheme. We were told the old scheme was restrictive when it came to conjoined, terraced and detached houses. The amendment tries to introduce flexibility. We keep hearing about…

We can issue a briefing note.

We have some former Ógra Fianna Fáil membership in the Visitors Gallery. I thank Senator Boyhan for raising this issue. I will give him a detailed response. I hope there is some new material in there compared with what he has heard before, but in the response I think he will see that there has been an emphasis on recruitment and filling vacant posts, which I feel is acknowledgement from Tailte Éireann that it does not want to be a bottleneck in the process anymore and an acknowledgement that perhaps it has been in …

I completely understand. The Senator is representing people who are being frustrated by this process and who are agitated by it. I totally understand. Fair play to the Senator for representing those people. As I outlined, I cannot get into the weeds in terms of the day-to-day running of the organisation. If Tailte Éireann has requests for me or the Department that will help to improve efficiency, we are there for those. It is onboarding staff who are now in the training phase. I hope that when that onboarding and t…

I thank the Senator for raising the issue. He made the interesting point that I take many of his Commencement matters. I would say that is because I am in the Department of housing. The Senator has been a champion for the housing issue. In fairness, he tries to raise it on every possible occasion. That is probably why I am getting many of them. The qualification criteria for this scheme are pretty black and white. It will be difficult to try to open it up again. I doubt there are many people in the cohort the Senat…

Is the Senator talking about multi-unit developments as well?

It is single one-off developments. That is where the focus should be. I will ask officials to look at this again and try to do a cost-benefit analysis on what it would cost the State if we allowed a small cohort who will have built and completed within the appropriate period but who, for whatever reason, missed out on the deadline for the application. They must be very annoyed and frustrated. They are taxpayers as well and a lot of that would be funding the scheme. I will undertake to do that.