Mica redress to be expanded
A REDRESS scheme for owners of homes with defective mica and pyrite minerals will be extended to other counties, Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien has said.
The Government introduced the redress scheme almost two years ago in the face of a huge campaign mounted by people affected by the defective blocks, which have ruined thousands of homes across the northwest.
The scheme is almost €3billion in scale at present.
Yesterday, Fianna Fáil TD Mr O’Brien commented: ‘The scheme is taking hold across the affected region, not just in Donegal but in Mayo, and I expect to expand the scheme very shortly to three further counties.’
Speaking to the News At One on RTÉ
Radio, he added: ‘I’m looking at Sligo. There’s a small number of homes in Fingal [north Dublin] and there are individual homes in some other counties.’
A report by the European Parliament last week said that it was ‘imperative’ that the scheme be ‘improved’ and called for ‘red tape’ to be reduced.
The parliament said the scheme should be improved by ‘addressing the concerns expressed by homeowners, widening its scope, reducing red tape, speeding up the progress of the process and involving financial institutions’.
Mr O’Brien said the committee that wrote the report was ‘very positive’ about the scheme. He also said steps had been taken to get rid of red tape.
The Enhanced Defective Concrete Blocks Grant Scheme initially only applied to homeowners in Donegal and Mayo, but was later widened to include houses in Limerick and Clare.
In recent days it was reported that so far only 43 homeowners in Donegal affected by the crisis have been able to receive a full payment for remediation works in the first three years of the redress scheme.
Responding to the reports that only a small number of people had received the full amount of funding, Mr O’Brien said: ‘It’s really good to see that works are under way and increased applications to the new scheme. In Mayo as well there has been a very significant increase in the number of applications to the scheme.’