Group to meet owners of pyrite homes

NO REMEDIATION scheme for pyrite contamination of houses can be considered until the full scale of the problem is known, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said.

He told the Dáil that the working group established to deal with the issue would meet people whose homes were affected by pyrite. The Oireachtas committee dealing with the environment and housing would also deal with the problem, he said.

Mr Kenny was responding to Socialist TD Joe Higgins (Dublin West) who called for a remediation scheme to be established for homeowners where pyrite mixed with gravel in their properties resulted in cracks in walls and floors and for the State to pursue those responsible.

Mr Higgins welcomed the establishment by Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan of a panel to look at the pyrite crisis, but he was concerned the Minister had said the State was not a party to the issue or in any way liable for it, because it was a civil matter.

“This is deeply worrying for affected homeowners” because the implication was that “they will be left with their homes coming apart at the seams while a gaggle of developers, builders and insurance companies slug it out for years in the courts to try and evade their responsibilities.”

He called for pyrite-affected homeowners to have significant representation on the panel, for a remediation scheme and fund to be established and for the State to “go after whatever corporate entities are partially responsible for this”.

Mr Higgins said the Taoiseach had a moral responsibility because the State overlooked this problem and the proper supervision of it. The State had a “serious responsibility” because it and the building regulator were negligent in not supervising the materials “going into these homes when it had known about pyrites for decades”.

Homebond, the builders’ insurance scheme set up in 1987, was “deeply flawed from the outset”. Mr Higgins added that it was “not all the fault of Fianna Fáil. Fine Gael and Labour were in Government twice in that time.”

Mr Kenny said some contractors had taken measurements to assess the damage and a small number had rectified the damage.

He could not comment on the pyrite court case or whether builders knew there was pyrite in the materials. Having seen at first hand the distress it caused, he was sure the Minister would ensure homeowners were represented on the working group and that it would have a deadline for an “analysis of the scale of the problem and how it might be dealt with”.