It would be helpful if the Minister were to provide a little more context for amendment No. 63 and the circumstances in which those regulations may be used. What is the origin or intention of this amendment? This is just to help us fully understand its purpose and scope, and whether it relates to the more substantive issue of amendment No. 74 and the regularisation process related to the Building Control Acts. With respect to amendment No. 74, in my contribution to the motion of instruction that we discussed earlie…

I move amendment No. 5: In page 5, between lines 26 and 27, to insert the following: “ Report on gap between cost of remediation and grant under scheme 2. Within 3 months of the passing of this Act the Minister shall lay before both Houses of the Oireachtas a report examining the gap between the actual cost of remediation for eligible homeowners and the grant provided under the scheme. The report shall set out recommendations for reform of the defective concrete block scheme to ensure that it provides 100 per cent …

I will press amendment No. 5.

I move amendment No. 6: In page 5, between lines 26 and 27, to insert the following: “Report on legislative changes necessary for end-to-end remediation scheme 2. Within three months of the passing of this Act the Minister shall lay before both Houses of the Oireachtas a report detailing the necessary changes to primary and secondary legislation to allow for the operation of an end-to-end remediation scheme for all those impacted by defective concrete blocks and related building materials.”.

I move amendment No. 7: In page 5, between lines 26 and 27, to insert the following: “Report on barriers to inclusion in scheme 2. Within three months of the passing of this Act the Minister shall lay before both Houses of the Oireachtas a report examining barriers to full inclusion of affected homeowners and others in the scheme including: (a) the operation of the damage threshold; (b) the issue of semi-detached properties; (c) the issue of side-by-side remediation; (d) the issue of retrospective payments. The rep…

I am not at all clear on what this amendment does and its relevance for a semi-detached dwelling, for example, where one dwelling is deemed to be awarded a grant the other has previously not been. It might be helpful if the Minister were to try and explain in plain English, particularly in a case where you have attached or semi-detached dwellings, what this amendment is trying to do. Obviously, as Deputy Mac Lochlainn outlined, this is a very significant issue. It is one where we have had examples in Mayo, Donegal …

My question is kind of the same as the first time. The Minister of State said this provides greater flexibility and it will effectively allow for the bypassing of that damage threshold. Will the Minister of State try to give us an explanation of how that is going to work? Having read this amendment four or five times, I am not clear. Is the Minister of State saying that if there are two homes side by side and both have applied for inclusion in the scheme, and one has been awarded a grant but the other has not becau…

After Dublin.

Without repeating the same argument, it would be helpful if the officials could produce a briefing note on how this is going to work that could be shared with the Oireachtas housing committee, for example. The committee members could share it with their colleagues. I am not at all clear how and against what criteria it will operate. It is clear the Minister is not going to give us that information here. That is fine but even a short briefing note from the officials explaining how they envisage this measure will wor…

I fully support the amendments, but I would like to make a comment on the section before we proceed. We have spent the past three and a half hours dealing with a wide range of deficiencies within the scheme, but section 8 is the substantive element of the legislation. It relates to the application for an increase to the remediation option grant. That is something for which people on this side of the House, particularly those from the impacted counties, have been making the case for quite some time. It is important …

The Minister has not explained the reason for the date. Let me just emphasise the chronology here. When Darragh O'Brien rushed through the legislation in 2022, the expectation was it would take some time for the regulations for the revised scheme to be completed. The Minister was crystal clear that he did not want homeowners to wait until the new regulations were introduced and therefore he gave a public commitment that if they proceeded to apply for inclusion in the original scheme, when the regulations for the ne…

The definition of "madness" is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result and that is exactly what the Minister is doing with this so-called plan. It is not a new plan and anybody with a shred of honesty who has read it would say that plainly. It is the same old failed policies repackaged, rebranded and re-presented one more time but this time with far less feeling. In fact, the only changes in this document from those of the Minister’s predecessors are the reintroduction of policies …

Well said.

I do not know if the Minister is a cinema fan, but he may at one point in his life have seen Terry Gilliam’s futuristic sci-fi movie “Brazil”. Having listened to the Minister's speech and having read the notes twice before and watched back his interaction with the committee - I was sick last week so I could not attend - it is a little bit like something from the movie, which means that I have no idea what he just said. I am going to be very honest with him. This is not to challenge it; we are not opposing this prop…

There were many omissions in the Minister's ill-fated housing plan launched only a matter of weeks ago but one that was particularly astonishing is the removal of targets, either across the life cycle of the plan or, indeed, on an annual basis, for cost-rental and affordable purchase homes delivered by local authorities, approved housing bodies, AHBs, and the Land Development Agency, LDA. Can the Minister explain why these targets that were in his predecessor's plan were removed and does that mean he has abandoned …

I would like the House to note that the Minister, of course, completely avoided the question and instead gave what can only be described as an Orwellian response to a simple question. There is no new starter home programme. What the Government has done is it has taken a bunch of schemes that existed under the previous Government's plan and, indeed, its predecessor, it has bundled them all up and it has added them into a global figure. The reason it is important, in particular, that there are targets for the deliver…

If that is the case, why would the Minister not say he has a target for new-build social homes? Again, this is a scheme that he funds and a scheme that local authorities and approved housing bodies deliver, some in conjunction with the Land Development Agency. It makes no sense to say that we do not need targets for cost rental and affordable purchase but we do for social housing. Again, it is a very simple question. There were clear targets for next year, some of which the Minister shared with us in the committee …

Yes, since 2016. Confidence and supply.

The Minister has published legislation that is going to make the most profound changes to the regulation of rents in the private rental sector in over a decade. From March of next year, tens of thousands of renters, progressively, quarter on quarter, are going to lose the meagre protections of the rent pressure zones and over time see their rents reset to market rents. Astonishingly, the Minister's Department conducted no analysis of the impacts of these changes on the rents that renters actually pay. Why did he no…

The House should note for the second time tonight that the Minister has studiously avoided the question. What do we know about tenancies? The Residential Tenancies Board tells us that the average length of a tenancy is three and a half years long. In the past 12 months, 70,000 fresh first-time tenancies were created. That is 28% of the total number of private rental tenancies. If those trends continue - trends that have been in train for a number of years - then within four years, the overwhelming majority of rente…