Charles Ward
Donegal · 100% RDR · Ireland
“I thank Deputy Kenny for bringing forward this motion. As a parent, I have seen the costs relating to sending children to school skyrocket over the past ten years. The situation is absolutely out of control.”
“Uniforms are supposed to represent equality, but they have become another financial burden on families who are already struggling with a cost-of-living crisis that has been going on for a very long time.”
“Those who were previously on particular school bus routes no longer have the option of using those routes. As a result, parents are forced to engage in long commutes and to cover the costs incurred in this regard. I welcome the motion.”
“She did not receive the substantial person-centred supports she desperately needed to rebuild her life. Support has to be extended beyond crisis intervention.”
“Domestic abuse is increasing and becoming more and more complex. I spoke in depth with Jessica Gallagher, who is clinical director of the Uplift Project. She works alongside women who are affected by domestic abuse, coercive control and sexual violence in Donegal. She said that demand for the service demonstrates the scale of unmet need.”
“I welcome Jennie's law. The publicly available register of judgments will be a life-saving resource, as people in relationships or considering relationships will be able to see whether people have histories of domestic violence convictions.”
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Every one of 544 lines we hold for Charles Ward, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 6 of 11.
“If the Minister wants to do this properly, he needs to listen to the people on the ground and to the people who have done this and who have been fighting for them instead of following what the rest of the Government is saying to him. I am telling the Minister now that if he does not look at this in the correct manner, then what will follow will be a humanitarian disaster all over Ireland. It is already a humanitarian disaster in Donegal. Families with hidden disabilities and children with special needs endure overcrowding or sensory overload when they move to different accommodation. Can the Minister imagine if a child with autism, who has a certain way of living his or her life and perhaps has ADHD, is taken out of his or her home? A unit could have been built in another part of the garden.”
“They are not getting the same treatment as everybody else. I feel they are being discriminated against and I think everybody else will feel this, too, by the time I am finished. Allowing homeowners to remain on site with space on their sites would save the Exchequer money. It would allow people with a disabled child, for example, to move from one house into a new build that is kitted out for them. They can move into their build and it is at no cost to the State. We do not need to put pressure on the rental market because we have 25,000-plus homes affected in Donegal. If we were to move the people in 2,000 homes tomorrow, we would not be able to do it because we do not have the capacity. The Government will not look at modular homes but it must.”
“Walls are there to protect families, but in defective concrete homes, they do not protect families. They will end up killing families if we do not do something about it. Homes may not meet the threshold today but they will meet a catastrophic threshold in the years to come. The Minister provides no mechanism to allow us to move on, as far as I am concerned. Adjacent remediation is welcome in principle but the Bill restricts it to dwelling adaptation. Basically, if a person with a disability has to move on, that is okay as long as the disability is visible. This excludes children and adults with hidden disabilities, including autism, ADHD, chronic illness and mental health conditions. Under the Disability Act, these individuals are entitled to protection and accommodation but they are not getting it.”
“The Government's amendments reveal the real problem we have, that is, we have not learned a single thing from the defective concrete crisis. Damage does not always look like damage. Legislation could have prevented this, but with flawed understanding, the deterioration will continue and the scheme will be flawed. There is one positive thing. A semi-detached house is now treated as one unit, so if one house does not meet the damage threshold, then the other can be deemed so. However, this is nothing more than a get-out-of-jail card as far as I am concerned. It relies on visual assessment. This is a blunt instrument that applies to all homes. The threshold does not measure structural integrity. The threshold measures visible cracking. Walls, however, are disintegrating behind plaster. You can knock the plaster and get nothing but dust.”
“Families, the purpose of modular homes, which is ultimately to save the State money, and ancillary payments were included. Partial defective builds before the cut-off date are still defective builds. Homeowners have been left behind. They have built their homes but their homes have crumbled and now they are left in debt through no fault of their own, but through the Government’s failure in regulation. The provision of upfront payments to allow people without necessary money to access the scheme, again at no cost to the State, was refused. My amendment to establish a public inquiry into the regulatory failures of this multibillion euro scheme was denied again, as well as many other extremities and amendments.”
“I move amendment No. 1: In page 5, line 22, to delete “Blocks”. I will make the speech I was not allowed to make earlier and I will not be muzzled. I will talk about defective concrete. Today's Bill should have been an opportunity to correct the fundamentally broken system. Instead, we are laying more complexity on top of injustice and calling it progress. I have submitted 18 pages of amendments to improve this scheme, yet more than half of those amendments were ruled out of order, including my amendment regarding the March cut-off date that I had chosen. With that, the Government is leaving 43 homeowners behind because it has chosen to abandon them. My amendment would provide interim arrangements regarding the provision of IS 465, with scientific evidence reinstating the original engineers' determinations.”
“Auxiliary grants for modular homes and end-to-end turnkey packages for everybody affected by defective concrete, from apartments to houses, is the only way we will get out of this. Mark my words; there will be death. Somebody will die in a defective concrete home. I and my colleagues have tried, but we are not being listened to. Will we be listened to when this makes headlines and starts to affect the Government? That is all I am going to say on this.”
“I also want to note that my constituents who applied for auxiliary grants and were turned down, and had been living in a car with their family since September, were granted them this week. The Minister and House can rebrand certificates and rename schemes all they want. The system remains incapable of delivering timely and fair outcomes for homeowners. The Bill had the potential to correct a fundamentally broken system, but that is gone. It puts burdens on homeowners and councils and creates new avenues for delays. Visible damage is not a reliable measure. Science and a proper protocol are what we need. We need science and safety. We need to implement these changes but are not doing that.”
“We must balance that against practical implementation, in particular when local authorities already wrestling with the administration of the scheme as it stands are struggling. The Minister and Department frequently claim they have consulted homeowners. The reality is quite different. The so-called homeowner liaison officer had not consulted with MAG for over a year after they said they had. I represent constituents directly every day. I have reported this on the floor of the Dáil and the Government is simply not listening to what is going on on the ground. It is heading for another failure. It is voting down amendments for the people I represent. This is about accountability, not plaudits.”
“If am not allowed to talk about building control, there are building control elements all over this. Okay, I will move on. The transitional provisions in section 32 transitional provisions are welcome because they ensure that previous applications are not invalidated, but they do not address the systemic delays. Part 3, which amends the Building Control Act 1990, links defective concrete remediation to national building standards.. This is necessary for safety. Sections 31 to 33, inclusive, update certificates and terminology, ensuring continuity, but also increase administrative complexity. Homeowners already affected and stressed are facing heavier burdens of paperwork and inspection approvals while living with uncertainty while homes crumble down around them. Safety and building control are vital.”
“The proposal for movable modular homes as an option to ultimately save the State in terms of ancillary grants and payments was left behind.”
“This Bill should have been an opportunity to correct a fundamentally broken system regarding everything from building control to where we are heading right now. Instead, we are laying more complexity on top of injustice and calling it progress. I have submitted 18 pages of amendments to improve this scheme, to make it fair and to make it work, yet more than half of these amendments have been thrown out, including an amendment providing for a March cut-off date. However, 43 families were absolutely left behind having been reassured by the previous housing Minister that this would not happen. They were abandoned. My amendment to provide interim arrangements regarding IS 465 in line with scientific evidence and reinstating the original engineering determinations was thrown out. I refer to 160 families who were downgraded and left behind.”
“St. Francis' National School in Barnesmore, County Donegal, is currently facing a crisis due to a severe shortage of special needs assistant, SNA, support. Four children with additional needs started in the school in September but despite this, no additional SNAs have been allocated. The current allocation is inadequate and the children have complex needs. The situation has become very distressing for the families, teachers and SNAs, who are doing everything possible to provide care for the pupils and secure inclusion for all pupils. The strain is too much. The Taoiseach must do what he can to rectify this situation. Will he work with the Department to ensure that schools in Donegal that face shortages will be granted an increase in their SNA allocations?”
“Will the Minister immediately order the Housing Agency to preserve all records and release unredacted evidence underpinning these decisions? This is a simple "Yes" or "No" question. Just give me a "Yes" or "No" answer to that question.”
“My constituents are coming into the office all the time and are contacting us. Their lives are being determined by the decisions of the Housing Agency as to whether they can rebuild their house and move on with their lives. When they request evidence behind the life-changing decisions, they receive black pages with ink all over them. It is heavily redacted. FOI was sought and refused and then overturned by the Information Commissioner. This is not transparency. Even more alarming is the Housing Agency record retention policy. Section 7, page 8, allows draft versions of files replaced by the final versions to be disposed of. Destroying records in these circumstances is indefensible. It undermines accountability and violates best record keeping standards. It fuels fears among the homeowners that there is stuff going on.”
“The Government amendment Bill this week will make it explicit that where the appeals board finds a significant error of law or fact, the board must issue a replacement decision and a case cannot be sent back to the Housing Agency that made the flawed decision in the first place. It is a really simple; it is a "Yes" or a "No".”
“This week amendments are being brought forward to legislation the Government says is intended to improve the scheme for applicants. This is now essential because the Housing Agency has made failed decisions and it should not be given a second opportunity to do this. It is an error of law that has been identified. The appeals board must be required to use the power given to it by statute to issue a replacement decision and the Housing Agency must be removed from the appeals process. This will cost the State nothing. It will restore fairness and transparency. Homeowners deserve a real appeal not a circular motion dressed up as due process. They deserve a system that protects them.”
“The only power the appeals board never uses is the one that would work, which is delivering justice. Instead of independent appeals we have a closed loop where the State appeals to itself, reviews itself and then reaffirms its own decisions, sometimes doing nothing more than tidying up the paperwork. This is not independence; this is institutional self-protection. It leaves homeowners trapped in the same system that failed them, with their homes still crumbling down around them. No other appeals body in the State operates this way, not in planning appeals, not in social welfare appeals and not in procurement appeals. In every other system, when the original decision-maker gets it seriously wrong, they do not get the chance to make that decision again so why is this the standard for people and families with defective concrete homes?”
“The law of the land is clear. Section 39(10)(b) of the defective concrete blocks Act 2022 sets out the powers of the appeals board. It may direct the Housing Agency or a local authority to reconsider a decision in line with the board's directions or it may replace the decision entirely with a new determination. That is what the Oireachtas intended. That is the safeguard homeowners were told they had but in place is a safeguard that is an absolute fiction. Of the appeals heard so far, the panel has found serious and significant errors of law in the Housing Agency's decisions. These are not minor matters but fundamental failures. When this has happened, every one of these cases has been sent straight back and the homeowners have been left under absolute pressure with no decisions made. Not once have these been overturned.”
“It is the reason children now fear weather warnings and the reason that every happy moment is tainted, as I said to the Minister, like me trying to put the Christmas lights up on a wall that no longer exists and is just plaster. This is not a legacy issue. This is my daily life and that of everybody else affected - thousands of us. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg, and the denial from the Government is staring us straight in the face. We need this sorted. It is basically in every county in Ireland. It is in Wexford right now as we speak in the Minister's constituency. I have been down there. People have shown me. We have a pyrrhotite issue there and a pyrrhotite issue in Donegal. It is the same problem with defective concrete geographically at two different ends of the country.”
“It is disappointing but, sadly, not surprising that there is so little mention of the defective concrete crisis in the new housing plan. It is a crisis that has impacted my native County Donegal and many countries throughout the whole country, and worse, it is referred in this to as a legacy issue. This is far from a legacy issue. It is alive and present and persistent. It is happening right now, and inaction will guarantee that this will continue into the future. It is a lived reality every single day for many of my constituents in County Donegal. It is the reason that homeowners cannot keep homes warm any more for families this winter.”
“Time is running out. We do not have another 14 years. We have been here for 14 years. It is time we acted, and it is time we acted now.”
“The Government had opportunity and chose to minimise it. Families do not need spin; they need safety, they need certainty, they need equality, they need truth and they need homes. I will continue to fight for the homes and for the families. I have an example of my own life and what is going on with me. I went out on Saturday night with my son. I had a GoPro on my head recording as we put up the Christmas lights, a memory that he can have for the rest of his life. I stood up on a ladder, looked in and saw the cracks on the wall. When I peered in, there was wall no left. That child was there underneath me and he sleeps in the room where I covered that up. I am asking and demanding the Minister to do this, and help the people all over Donegal, Mayo, Limerick, Clare and anywhere that says that we need to address this and we need to do it now.”
“The Government says: "We are following the science" which is false. IS 465 is outdated and contradicted by geological surveys. It is simply not fit for purpose and we have been told this time and time again. We need to start following the science. The Government has said this is the biggest scheme in the State. Why is it handled with secrecy, last minute drafts, hidden votes and rushed legislation? We need a clear, purposed and straight talking way of going forward where the truth has to prevail. People have to be held accountable that have let this happen to us. The Bill does not fix the scheme. It does not deliver justice. It is does not meet scientific standards. It does not provide equality, it does not provide full redress, it does not prevent legal challenge and it does address the core value.”
“The Housing Agency's mismanagement is an increasing liability. Legal exposure is growing, which I keep on saying. There is mishandling of this whole scheme. There are breaches in human rights, such as Articles 40 and 43. There are breaches in the EU Charter and the equality under the law. The longer this goes on, the more it is going to cost, not less. We have a Government that claims the opposite of what is happening on the ground. It is so frustrating. It has many claims that this scheme has worked, but it has not. This crisis is catastrophic and is not going to go away. A total of 100% grant coverage is false. There are caps, exclusions of families and tens of thousands have been left short. Independent appeals are false. Appeals are recycled back to the Housing Agency.”
“Unlike the pyrite scheme, homeowners must organise demolition, secure contractors, manage site safety, complete paperwork, prefund the works themselves, negotiate disputes and handle inspections. For people with disabilities, pensioners, single parents and people in crisis, this is not redress; this is simple abandonment. They do not have the skill level to do it. It takes a certain skill level to be a builder or contractor. As Deputy O'Donoghue will tell the Minister, it is a skill level that not a lot of people have. I have it; the Deputy has it. I have done this before. I know what it takes to build a house, and it is a skill beyond most people. The Bill needs to be amended. Partial remediation costs more in the long run. Repeat appeals drain resources. Training engineers and outsourcing science is simply wasteful.”
“If we could put in an upfront payment, we could get people up and going and get this moving fast, but we cannot at the moment, to reduce the administrative costs to ensure fairness to low-income families who are trapped, but the Government refuses this because upfront payments would demonstrate the true scale of the crisis, which is 20,000 plus at the bare minimum. I hate to say this because it breaks my heart to see this in all our constituencies from Donegal to Mayo, Limerick, Clare, Sligo and everywhere in between, it is coming. We know it is coming. The scheme forces vulnerable people to be builders, quantity surveyors, engineers and project managers.”
“It is essential going forward to reduce the mental health epidemic that is coming and the tsunami of homelessness. We need to speed up construction times. The Government refuses to allow developers to build entire estates overnight, but we need to get thinking quickly. Tens of thousands of houses in Donegal are going to be falling down around us in the next five to ten years. We need to act on this. The Bill does not provide upfront payments. Homeowners cannot front €40,000 to €100,000. Many of the homes are structurally unsafe and financially worthless.”
“There are two schemes in place where family members with one in Dublin who got 100% redress, and they got nothing in Mayo. Why do homeowners in the west and north west not deserve the same rights? It is the same fairness, clarity and protection. It is unequal treatment and it is unconstitutional. The advice given to the Attorney General was that using the existing model would be too expensive. It is not included in this Bill. In his press release, the Minister said that it would include side by sides. The Minister has addressed that today, late on, with the press release at 3.30 p.m. I understand that is coming and that is most welcome. We have to try to prevent homelessness. We have to protect the elderly and disabled. We have to allow families to stay near schools, jobs and their support networks.”
“Instead, it is handled with maximum secrecy. The pyrite remediation scheme is a blueprint deliberately ignored. The pyrite scheme worked because it delivered full State-led remediation. It covered all the cost. It provided accommodation, side-by-side building, an end-to-end scheme, clear scientific standards and an independent body that replaced decisions and did not recycle them. I have constituents and family members in Mayo and Dublin as part of two families who went through this. In Mayo, they have pyrite. They had pyrite in Dublin. The people in Dublin got 100% redress. The sister in Mayo did not. They are citizens of this country; they are treated differently. She asked me why she was getting treated like a second-class citizen. I told her that I could not answer her because that is the Government.”
“We had an online meeting on Monday with almost no notice. There was no time to review the draft, consult the stakeholders or prepare. Members were asked to vote by email and waive scrutiny privately with no transparency. This was deliberate. It was manipulation and it was a calculated effort to silence meaningful debate. Then, late last night another insult came. The Bill was meant to come out but it did not come out until 10 a.m. today. That was when we got a look at it. The tactic is to force TDs who cannot consult or get proper amendments done in time. We cannot analyse the way forward. We cannot prepare amendments with proper time when we are left with this and that exposes the weakness this scheme has caused. It is truly meant to be the biggest scheme in the State and handled with maximum transparency but it is not.”
“I feel unsafe to close my eyes. Every time I close my eyes and the wind hits against the house, I am worried that the house will come down. I look across at my children and I do not know what to do. I get these kinds of messages every day, as do my colleagues. We all can understand what is going on. Pre-legislative scrutiny was waived for a reason. It exists to prevent bad law, force transparency, ensure accountability and allow TDs, especially Opposition TDs, to propose improvements before the Bill is locked down. The Government needed the scrutiny to be waived because it would have exposed the flaws, scientific inaccuracies and human consequences of this. The Government delayed sending the draft Bill to the housing committee for five months. It was finally circulated late on Friday evening.”
“For doing my job by representing my constituents, I was interfering - No. A more absurd, dysfunctional system could not be designed and, as I have said previously, the human costs of this scheme have been proven by research. It is not absurd. It is not decisions. These decisions are destroying lives. Research by Karen Kirby and Oisin Keenan of Ulster University into cases of structural collapses, uncertainty and prolonged displacement shows higher rates of depression in families, chronic anxiety, inability to maintain one's life and go to work, increased risk of suicide, severe emotional harm to children and long-term PTSD-type symptoms. A constituent told me recently: Every time the wind shakes the house, my heart stops. I lie awake wondering if tonight is the night the walls will come down. I do not feel safe.”
“The scheme is self-protective, but not homeowner-protective. The appeals system is independent in name only. The Government claims the appeals panel is independent but section 39(10)(b) of the Act states: the Appeal Board shall— [...] (i) direct ... the Housing Agency ... to reconsider its decision ..., or (ii) replace the decision [itself] That does not sound like independence to me. In reality, the board never replaces the decision. Every appeal is pushed straight back to the Housing Agency, the same flawed logic appears again and homeowners wait months and years for the same outcome. This is not independence; this is a closed loop designed to protect the agency from accountability. Let me say this clearly: when I raised concerns, the chair of the Housing Agency wrote to me and accused me of interference.”
“This is not a mistake; this is a choice to ignore the science because acknowledging it would force the Government to admit the truth, which is that the only thing we can get out of this is full demolition. That is what is required when an iron sulfate attack is happening in a building. It is a terminal decline in a building. The technical review is simply a farce. The Government tells families who have been wrongly assigned partial remediation that they can request a technical review. It is a bad joke. It is an insult. It is like sending a surgeon to perform heart surgery with a textbook from the 1970s, him botching the operation and then telling the patient to apply for a technical review. It is crazy stuff. The burden is again entirely on the homeowner, who must prove the State was wrong and again wait months or years.”
“It is simply not redress. Science has moved on, but the scheme has not. The Government continues to hide behind IS 465, a standard that does not reflect scientific consensus. It misidentifies the root cause of the damage and leads engineers to recommend partial remediation, which we will have to come back to at a later date. The Geological Survey of Ireland has confirmed the crisis is primarily due to internal sulfate attack, not mica. Mica is not the issue here, but the State continues to train engineers on a outdated standard. Even Engineers Ireland, through its director general, told an Oireachtas committee that IS 465 is simply not fit for purpose. The Housing Agency still instructs engineers to follow it.”
“Government TDs repeatedly described this as the biggest scheme in the history of the State, but just over 200 applicants have completed it and most of them got partial remediation and will have to be revisited in the future at great expense to the Exchequer. Partial remediation is fiscally irresponsible. It is a political cover-up. The State knows this and continues it anyway. This is not redress. It is as simple as that. It is a grant scheme. Let us call it what it is, a grant scheme. It is not 100% redress. We can call a grant full expenditure coverage, but if caps, exclusions, callbacks and hidden costs leave families tens of thousands of euro in debt, it is not redress. Vulnerable families and people are forced to become project managers, find contractors, navigate the costs and engineering disputes and manage dangerous sites.”
“Applications do not equal safe homes, structural repairs or justice. The truth is that the scheme is dysfunctional. Even those who are accepted onto it are stuck with hundreds of thousands of euro of debt. The reality on the ground is unsafe homes and unsafe lives. Hundreds of families live in homes in which the external leaf has collapsed. They are told, unbelievably, that this is safe. They sleep under Bison slabs, as I said earlier, and watch as the cracks appear, get bigger and the wall that was once there turns into powder. This is not success; this is neglect. Partial remediation is a complete failure and cannot be considered.”
“I recognise that and it is needed, but let us be honest; it is a drop in the ocean in terms of what we need. This amendment Bill does not fix the scheme. It does not address the most dangerous failures. It does not protect the most vulnerable. It does not stop the trauma or injustice. A few administrative tweaks cannot disguise the fact the scheme is fundamentally broken. The State allowed defective material to enter the market and families are paying the price. Applications are not progress. They are evidence of a crisis. The Government boasts about 3,000 applications as though it were proof of success, but proof it is not. People are afraid to apply to the scheme because they simply cannot afford it. Their homes are falling apart. They are terrified because they are currently out of options.”
“I stand today not only as a TD, but as someone who is directly affected by this. This is a Government-created situation. It happened because of a lack of checks on quarries. If this had been done properly, we would not be facing this situation. I speak with the anger of a father who has watched his home crumble. I speak with the frustration of the people who contact me every day and who cannot take one more sleepless night worrying whether the Bison slab over their heads will come down and injure or kill their children. This is happening. Every day we are contacted. I acknowledge that there is small progress in this Bill, but I cannot pretend it is nearly enough. Progress is limited. Some families will finally receive a retrospective payment.”
“I will give the Tánaiste a quick example. Solomons Court in Letterkenny has 1,400 houses and every single one of them has defective concrete. Some 15 have been remediated. With some, that involved full demolition and with others, it was partial remediation. However, the majority of people there are stuck because they are in a town and if 500 of them want to go into this scheme and get on with their lives - they have been living this for the last 12 to 13 years - there is absolutely nowhere for them to go. We have to make provisions and realise this a humanitarian crisis. Large numbers of people are going to need to move. In Donegal, 25,000 will potentially have to move. Where are we going to house them? That is how serious this is.”
“I am pleading with the Minister to look upon this as a humanitarian crisis and to please do something about these amendments. We have a humanitarian and homelessness crisis heading towards Donegal and the rest of the country.”
“As the Tánaiste knows, I am living this experience so I can tell him at first hand what is happening on the ground. There is a humanitarian crisis in Mayo and a potential humanitarian crisis in Wexford and Limerick. Yesterday, a pyrrhotite issue emerged in Wexford. Geographically, we are at opposite ends of the country but we have the same problem. Within a mile of where I live, there are 200 houses currently affected. If the scheme happened in the morning, we would have absolutely nowhere for the people to go, and I am in a small area. In Deputy Doherty's area in west Donegal there were not that many people with defective homes two years ago but there are hundreds of them coming from the west and south of Donegal. The number is multiplying and we have absolutely nowhere for people to go.”
“There needs to be an all-island approach to address this. Passing this Bill would mean that the court would impose a restraining order against those convicted of a crime involving sexual violence and the victims would be protected. This is a very important step in ensuring that victims of sexual violence feel safe after experiencing such traumatic events. We need to go much further in addressing the root of this. The root of this is men. Men need to do better. They have a part to play in this and they need to take collective responsibility for addressing misogyny. The Government needs to take responsibility and hold social media companies to account for the rise in misogynistic and super-masculine content on social media. This is negatively influencing young men and boys.”
“As we know, today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. It is unbelievable that worldwide a woman is killed every ten minutes by an intimate partner or family member. Although we may think Ireland is a progressive country, femicide continues to take the lives of many women and girls across our country with no sign of any real progress. A total of 35% of women in Ireland have experienced abuse from an intimate partner. That is more than one in three, which is well above the EU average of 31.8%. The North of Ireland is one of the most dangerous places in Europe to be a woman, which is shocking. Research from Ulster University has shown that 98% of women in the North have experienced at least one form of violence or abuse in their lifetime, with half experiencing this before the age of 11.”
“A sum of €1.4 million has been spent on a security hut but 43 taxpaying families have been abandoned. As Minister for Finance, will the Tánaiste include in the upcoming Bill the 43 homeowners and deliver side-by-side building for vulnerable families so that nobody is left behind?”
“Once again, the Government has waived pre-legislative scrutiny on the defective concrete Bill. On 14 June 2022, the Taoiseach said, we will get on with it. With that attitude, 205 homes have been partially built in Donegal; 579 have works ongoing and 43 homes have been completely abandoned. There are 3,000 applications, most of which are stuck, including mine. I have been stuck in this scheme for five years and cannot progress. I agreed with the Minister, Deputy Browne, that scrutiny on caps, rates and amendments would be waived if nobody was left behind but amendments have also been pushed through without public debate. We roll with the headlines; billions are being spent on a scheme that people cannot access because it is too hard and is worthless. It is all figures but nobody is getting on it.”
“There is nothing noble about these people having been made to suffer and the horrors they have gone through over the past few years. For years and years we have witnessed the suffering on a scale that will never been compared. We have seen children dying. We have seen families wiped out and we have done nothing about it. Israel must be held accountable for its actions and continuing violations. Passing the occupied territories Bill would send an important message that we will not stand by and allow genocide to be normalised. We must act today and every day. History will judge us on what we have done. The Minister of State said this was a fragile moment. It is a lot more than a fragile moment as far as I am concerned. Genocide is genocide and the Irish Government is afraid to say it. Israel is complicit in genocide.”
“As a result, people have been destroyed, their families wiped out and ceasefire violations are occurring. What are we doing about this? The occupied territories Bill passed Second Stage in the Seanad in January 2019. It has been left on Committee Stage for seven years. We sat and allowed this conflict to escalate for seven years. We are meant to be doing something as a country but we have done very little. The Government is to blame for that. We knew about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people long before 7 October and we did nothing to intervene. Even since then we have not used our voice to condemn the role America and Europe have played in this and their actions. We recognised the State of Palestine but only after others did it. We should have been the first. We do recognise the State of Palestine.”
“According to satellite images reviewed by the BBC, Israel has destroyed more than 1,500 buildings in Gaza. Photos show entire neighbourhoods controlled by the IDF have been levelled in less than a month. We have only learned this through satellite images - God knows what is actually happening on the ground because it is extremely difficult to get reliable information because of the number of journalists who have been killed. Israel has killed 232 journalists in Gaza. On average that is 13 per month. This is the deadliest conflict for media workers ever recorded. More journalists have been killed in Gaza than in both world wars. That should be the cause of absolute outrage but it is not. The information we receive about Palestine is unreliable and incomplete.”