€350k mica cap ‘is not enough’
Protesters say 40% of homeowners will lose out
A €350,000 cap on mica redress would leave 40% of affected homeowners out of pocket, according to campaigners.
Protesters gathered outside Leinster House yesterday, stepping up their campaign for a 100% redress programme.
The group brought defective blocks from Donegal to the Dáil to illustrate how fragile they are, with one describing the bricks crumbling ‘like Weetabix’.
Mica activist Paddy Diver knocked the blocks with a hammer or squeezed them in his hand, to demonstrate how they turned to rubble. He also told Public Expenditure Minister Michael McGrath that people are taking sleeping tablets and anxiety medication to deal with the stress of their crumbling houses.
It is thought that at least 6,000 homes in Donegal and Mayo could be affected by mica.
Minister McGrath stopped to speak to the protesters on his way to the Dáil but stressed to them that he had not seen any redress report yet – which is due imminently – and that people need to ‘bear with us’.
It came following suggestions yesterday that any potential redress scheme may be capped €350,000 per home.
Mr Diver told the Fianna Fáil TD that if anything less than 100% redress is offered, they will continue returning to Dublin to protest. ‘I respect the process that has been underway,’ Minister McGrath told him. ‘I haven’t even seen a draft but I expect I will see it very shortly.
‘We need to do better. That’s absolutely acknowledged. As soon as we get the report, we’ll deal with it quickly. We recognise how serious this issue is.’
Martin and Bernie Homer live in a crumbling home outside Letterkenny with their four children, aged between six and 14-yearsold. Speaking to Minister McGrath outside Leinster House yesterday morning, Mrs Homer explained that they were told two weeks ago that their home will need to be demolished.
‘You have been heard,’ the Public Expenditure Minister told them.
The couple told the Mail last night that while they thought Mr McGrath seemed sympathetic, he needs to back this up with action. ‘We built a detached home in 2007 and we started noticing the cracking after the bad frost in 2012,’ Mr Homer explained.
‘We started covering some of the cracks but within three years we were back to where we were, if not worse.
‘The last number of months, our house has really started to accelerate.
‘We contacted an engineer to come and have a look at it and we’re looking at a complete demolition of our house and garage.
‘A couple of weeks ago, I was putting our little six-year-old to bed and she announced: “Daddy, when do you think we’re going to have to move out? We’ve got mica, haven’t we? They’re going to have to knock our house down”.
‘It’s bad enough that myself and my wife have the stress and the worry of this. When you see it impacting on the children, it brings it to another level.’
The Homers said that they do not know where they are going to go when their house is demolished in 18 months’ time as they begged the Government to sign off on a 100% redress scheme.
Mr Diver, meanwhile, said that Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien ‘cares more about his image... than he cares about mica’.
He explained: ‘It’s 100% redress we need. This is not the homeowners’ fault.
‘I told [Minister McGrath] some of the horrific stories about old age pensioners needing sleeping tablets to get to sleep.
‘Mothers taking tablets for their anxiety. People giving up work because of depression over what is going on.
‘The houses are deteriorating and the mental health is deteriorating.
‘Everything I have worked and dreamed for is coming down to the ground. After ten years of living in it, memories with the children, there’s going to be a hole in the ground. Back to square one.’
Mr Diver said that a €350,000 cap for homes affected by the defective blocks would ‘leave 40% of homeowners behind’.
‘We need to do better’
Not seen the mica report
Speaking in the Dáil yesterday afternoon, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar also said that he had not seen the redress report.
He said that he would consider the working group’s proposals alongside Minister O’Brien, as well as Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Green Party leader Eamon Ryan, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe and Minister McGrath.
The Attorney General would also be consulted, with a memorandum to be brought to the Cabinet on the issue in a week’s time.