Bríd Smith Demands 100% Redress for Defective Apartments
Bríd Smith spoke in the Parliament about the crisis of defective apartments, demanding 100% redress for affected homeowners and tenants. She accused the state and developers of deliberate failings, criticised the official report for failing to identify responsible parties, and urged measures to hold the industry to account.
Main demand
Bríd Smith set out a clear demand that campaigners and affected families must receive 100% redress. She told the gallery and the minister that legislators should commit to legislating a formula for full remediation and compensation for those who have been failed by the system.
State and developer responsibility
Smith argued the crisis is rooted in a close relationship between the political establishment and the developer-led model. She said it was a deliberative policy of Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael to treat builders and developers with kid gloves, to allow self-regulation, rezoning and a married relationship between developers and the building industry.
Criticism of the report
Smith welcomed elements of the report on scale and revelations but criticised its failure to seek out who was responsible. She said the report speculates about special purpose vehicles and defunct builders instead of identifying the entities that knowingly built to cheaper standards and exposed residents to risks, including inadequate fire protection.
Immediate cases and safety concerns
Smith highlighted urgent individual cases, noting people facing remediation bills of "€65,000 plus" and an estimated large number of affected households - "maybe 100,000 people". She cited the Liberty Lane example where 27 students lived in illegal, unsafe accommodation, were charged 500 to 700 euro a month and now face eviction, while the builder has walked away with about 16,000 euro a month.
Proposed remedies and comparisons
Smith urged the state to pursue liable developers who remain active in the industry and to consider long-term measures such as a tax on residential development profits, citing Britain post-Grenfell as precedent. She said a tax must be designed so costs cannot be passed on and that the state must acknowledge its failures and deliver full redress.
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First of all, obviously, to welcome everybody into the gallery. It's not our gallery, it's yours, and it's always good to see the public come in to the Parliament because it has that dynamic of putting manners on lots of people in here, I can tell you. So you're very welcome, and also to thank Sinn Fein very much for putting this motion prior to the end of the year because I think it's hugely important that we discuss this, and I doubt it'll be our last discussion. The last time we had a discussion around this, Pascal Dunne, who was sitting where you are, Minister, and he said to Deputy Paul Morphy, who's been working closely with the Not Our Fault campaign, who are in the gallery, he said to him, no matter what we do, it won't be good enough for people before profit, you won't accept anything. Well, I want to tell you here tonight, we will, and the campaigners will, and that is 100% redress. That is what they'll accept, and people before profit will be very happy when they see that delivered. At the very least, tonight, you should give a commitment to the people in the gallery that they will be treated no differently to the other groups who have been failed by the state, the microgroups, the pyrite groups, who had to campaign to get justice. It is about this state's failure, and I'm not going to take lectures from other deputies about point scoring. I think it's important to talk about the truth of what happened here, and Prime Time Programme did a lot to bring it out. But when we talk about a state's failure, it's not an oversight, it's not a sort of lapse, or a blunder, or somebody forgot to look at something. It was a deliberative policy of both Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael to treat the builders and developers with kid gloves, to allow them to self-regulate, and therefore to put these people into this position. And they don't just stop there, they've rezoned lands for them, and they've more or less married the developer and the building industry in a way that is just shocking and unbelievable. And we have to move away from that legacy. And your commitment tonight to these people, that you will give them 100% redress, you'll work out a formula, it'll be legislated for, etc., would be a fantastic, if you like, Christmas gift or a Christmas payback to people who absolutely deserve it. It's no exaggeration to say that the housing crisis and the defective apartment crisis both have their roots in the same problem, and that is the closeness of the political establishment in this country to the developer-led and builder-led model. So we should start by recognising the 100% redress is what is needed. I want to address some other issues around the report itself. So we welcome all elements of the report, or most elements of them, particularly around the scale of the revelations, the amount of homes that have been involved. But it is quite clear to anyone who saw the primetime special that the builders and developers knew exactly how to build apartments. It was in their plans, and those plans were signed off by local authorities and professionals. They didn't build them in the way they were meant to build them, not because of complexities of buildings, but because it was cheaper, and they could make more profits by taking shortcuts. To suggest otherwise is extremely misleading, and I believe in an attempt to obscure who is responsible and why they are responsible. But the really infuriating omission from the report is the refusal and the discouragement of any attempt to seek out who they were, who is responsible for the massive number of defective apartments. The report just states that many developments were done by special purpose vehicles, or that developers stroke builders may have gone out of business. This is speculative, and not based on any attempt by the report and its authors to find out who were behind the defective apartments, and if many of them are still operating, because I know there's people in that gallery, I've spoken to them, who are facing €65,000 plus bill to remediate their homes, homes that are dangerous to live in. And they can look out their window across a field from the department and see the developer who built their home building another complex today. They know who it is, so it wouldn't be rocket science for this state to find out exactly who it is and to go after them. They haven't disappeared into the ether, they haven't been teleported to another dimension, they are still very much involved in the trade and working in the industry. And most importantly, they knowingly put the lives of maybe 100,000 people, we're not sure, but a big chunk of them at risk by not living up to the standards, particularly around fire protection. The cutting costs, the maximising profits was what they were all about. And finally, I'd say this, it might be worth our while looking across the water to what has happened in Britain post-Grenfell, because there they placed a tax on the profits of the residential development industry. And we need to look at a long-term tax on the industry's profits that's designed in a way that they cannot pass on the costs and that there is no escaping from. In the meantime, I think it would behove you, Minister, for to say that the state will owe up to its failures and give the reassurance and the 100% redress that's required by these people, because we have a culture, we have a culture that has led us this week to Liberty Lane, where 27 young students lived in danger, because a builder thought it was okay to break the law and create an effective apartment block for students that he was charging 500 to 700 euro a month for, and they were totally illegal. And all of those students are facing eviction now on Friday, because it's not safe to live in those apartments. The fire officers are extraordinarily worried about them. The builder has just walked away with about 16,000 euro a month of their money. I believe they are owed that money back. And I think this state needs to do much, much more to recreate a culture where builders and developers are held accountable, where there's consequences for them when they put people's lives and livelihoods at risk. All right. Thank you. Thank you.
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