A SLOW-MOTION EARTHQUAKE
We need 100% redress for our families with crumbling homes. Sinn Féin TD PÁDRAIG Mac LOCHLAINN writes on the personal experiences of those directly affected by the ongoing Mica and Pyrite scandal
Thousands of families from the west of Ireland have had their lives torn asunder by the mica and pyrite scandal. Their homes are crumbling around them. This is a national disaster. It is an earthquake happening in slow motion. The human toll of this ordeal has been heartbreaking. This has led to unbearable mental distress for families. I know families and people who have been close to emotional breakdown. These people are close to financial ruin. They say that their very lives have crumbled around them with their homes. For them, the dream has turned into a living nightmare. I live in Buncrana, the epicentre of this disaster in north Donegal. This scandal has left deep scars on our community. It is agonising to see neighbours, friends, and family suffer in this way. The trail of devastation winds its way through communities that share the sor-
• MICA AND PYRITE – Thousands of families homes are crumbling around them
Their very lives have crumbled around them with their homes. For them, the dream has turned into a living nightmare
‘Defects – Living with the legacy of the Celtic Tiger’ demonstrated that the devastation of the mica and pyrite scandals for thousands of families, as well as that caused by the many construction defects in other homes across the State, is the outworking of the repeated and wilful failure of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments to strengthen our building control laws and regulations or to enforce the limited regulations that were in place. Often
row and anger of their families, friends, and neighbours. These communities range from my own in north Donegal, down through counties Sligo, Mayo and on to Clare, Limerick, and Tipperary. The cause of this crisis is beyond dispute. In June 2017, the ‘Independent Expert Panel on Concrete Blocks’ established by the government found that the cause of the crumbling homes in Donegal and Mayo was the “excessive amount of deleterious materials (muscovite mica and pyrite) in the constituent aggregate used to manufacture the concrete blocks”. The State had introduced regulations as far back as the 1940s limiting the amount of the destructive minerals, muscovite mica and pyrite, in the manufacture of concrete blocks but the State failed to enforce these regulations. This infamous practice of self-regulation in the building industry reached a crescendo during the Celtic Tiger building boom. Eoin Ó Broin’s recently published book,
• Paddy Diver started blocking companies who had supplied him with defective concrete blocks and soon large numbers of other affected families joined him
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because of the close relationship between key figures in those parties with the building and construction industry. Following many years of campaigning by the affected families in Donegal and Mayo, the last government finally agreed to introduce the Defective Concrete Blocks Grant Scheme. Unlike the Pyrite Remediation Scheme that over 2,000 families in Dublin and North
ISSUE NUMBER 4 – 2021 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 4 anphoblacht
