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A homeowner who was affected by mica outside Leinster House today. Source: PA Images
For weeks, activists seeking relief for homeowners affected by mica have been protesting outside Leinster House.
They even brought the campaign to New York, and Taoisach Michael Martin was on duty at the United Nations last week.
Now, the government has received a report from the working group, which has been studying the mica problem and remedial plans.
Housing Minister Darragh O'Brien will review the report with a view to making recommendations to the Cabinet next week or next.
Whether these proposals will be the beginning of a homeowner’s solution remains to be seen, although activists plan to hold a major protest in Dublin on October 8.
So, where are we in terms of what the activists want and what the government is talking about?
Mica dispute explanation (again)
In June, we released a separate interpreter outlining the entire content of the dispute and the condition of the affected houses.
It boils down to the presence of natural mineral muscovite in the concrete blocks used to build houses.
The presence of mica will absorb moisture, weaken the concrete, and cause the cracking and crumbling of houses that you may be familiar with from news reports.
A defective neighborhood in the Leinster House protest today. Source: Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie
We do not yet have exact figures on how many households have been affected, but previous estimates indicate that there may be between 5,000 and 6,000 households, mainly in Mayo and Donegal.
Local authorities in Sligo, Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary have also been participating in the existing defective concrete block subsidy program, which suggests that this number is even greater.
Four years ago, a team of concrete block experts in Donegal County and Mayo County studied this issue.
One of its findings is that there is a legal limit on the content of mica in concrete blocks, and no company should put the product on the market unless it complies with the regulations.
However, the report also found that the building control department does not have internal technical resources to test building products that may not be compliant.
In addition, the expert group believes that it is unreasonable to expect the building control authority to prevent the problem from occurring.
One of the problems is that due to the parties involved, any legal recourse for the homeowner will be very complicated.
From builders to brick suppliers to quarries, it is very difficult to find and prove failures.
Tom Parlon, chairman of the Construction Industry Federation, said in a speech at One's RTÉ News today that builders can only use the products they provide.
Regardless of the legal recourse, any case will take too long for a homeowner living in a crumbling house.
Activists argue that no matter where they are wrong, they are clearly not wrong.
On the contrary, they believe that the existing regulations lack supervision and enforcement, and the state bears the ultimate responsibility for this.
Therefore, they argued that the government and the finance department should pay for the full repair or reconstruction of defective houses.
Whether the state can subsequently seek to recover part of the cost through legal means or other methods (such as construction tax), this is a future question.
"We have done a lot of work in this area, involving our legal recourse against those responsible. I don't have that details yet," Housing Minister Darragh O'Brien said yesterday.
After a long-term campaign by the affected homeowners, the defective block is scheduled to open for applications in June 2020.
It has five options, from replacement of the exterior wall (49,500 euros) to complete demolition and reconstruction (247,500 euros). The plan allows owners to claim costs up to 90% of these limits.
Affected homeowners argue that in many cases, the ceiling will not include the cost of demolition, planning, and reconstruction, and they will have to bear 10% of the cost in any case.
Homeowners also need to pay 5,000 euros for the mica test to apply for the grant program, which will become an obstacle for some troubled families.
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Activist Paddy Diver was in a van outside Leinster House today. Source: Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie
In addition to the costs associated with the actual reconstruction of the house, the family said that it will also incur additional costs, such as renting a house during the repair or reconstruction of the house.
For these reasons, the movement continues, and government TDs in the affected areas have lobbied on behalf of the new plan.
The ministers even admitted that the previous plan was not enough.
For example, last week, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar stated that the previously announced plan was “not sufficient” and needs to be “strengthened”. Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe used similar language today, saying that any new government plan needs to be "more comprehensive."
Housing minister Darragh O'Brien, the minister in charge of the issue, said last night that the plan needs to be "strengthened" because the current "does not operate as planned."
O'Brien will receive the report prepared by the defective concrete block working group tonight.
The working group includes department officials, representatives of the Mica Action Team, and representatives of local authorities. O'Brien admitted that there had been "difficult meetings" between homeowners and department officials.
In a speech yesterday, the minister said that the public wallet has committed 1.5 billion euros and any enhanced plan will "increase costs."
He said: "We must realize that this is a monetary cost that cannot be ignored."
However, O'Brien has been reluctant to publicly state whether the plan should be capped.
In the past 24 hours, someone suggested that the compensation cap should be 350,000 euros per homeowner.
This kind of "kite flying" was criticized by Michael Dougherty, a spokesman for the Mica Movement, who told RTÉ's Irish Morning News today that if this is the upper limit of any remedial plan, he will be "very, very worried".
Doherty said that such a proposal would "fall like a shot put" because it would not provide 100% remedy for approximately 40% of affected homeowners.
"We have calculated the cost of replacing an existing house through a SCSI calculator, and the cost of mica alone is about 40,000 euros," he said.
"This is about testing, planning permission, temporary rental accommodation, etc.. This alone costs 40,000 Euros and has no added value to the homeowner. We have passed these figures. These are not high-end finishes. These are the calculations. The absolute basic finishes allowed in the device, the figures show that 350,000 euros will lag behind 40% of us, which is just not an acceptable position."
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