By Emma Mooney

Copyright thesun

OWNING a house is a dream for all families – but that aspiration has become a nightmare for thousands, with walls crumbling before their eyes.

The defective concrete blocks scandal is destroying some 25,000 houses across Ireland leaving families stuck with hollow shells for homes as they slowly decay from pyrite and mica.

And one family described their torment, saying: “It’s not a home, it’s hell.”

Thousands of homes in Donegal were built using concrete blocks infested with pyrite – a mineral which causes structural damage through oxidation.

Gaffs in Clare, Limerick, Mayo, and Sligo have also been badly impacted.

The properties affected by the issue have quickly become unlivable and must be torn down and built from the ground up.

The Government‘s redress scheme – which was first announced in November 2021 – is currently capped at €420,000, at a total cost to the exchequer of €2.2 billion.

In response to the struggle of hundreds of families who claim they feel “abandoned” by the Dublin-based coalition Government, the 100 per cent Redress Party was founded in Donegal in 2023, with Charles Ward elected as a TD for the area.

The party calls on the Government to provide for those who have been affected by the scandal, in the form of modular housing that families can live in until their houses are rebuilt with State funding.

Previous Government efforts to address the issue include the 90-10 scheme, in which those affected would pay ten per cent of the costs while the State would shoulder the rest.

And the current scheme, the Defective Concrete Blocks Grant, the biggest in the history of the state, means a house must meet a damage threshold, and it can then be fixed, but the homeowners must pay back the money over time.

However, those affected say neither scheme has worked and insist now is the time for serious action to fix their “heartbreaking” problem.

Mum-of-four Angela Ward had her house built in 2004, and it quickly started to deteriorate.

Her family now live in a home with rainwater leaking in, exposed bricks, and black mould on the walls.

‘HORRENDOUS STATE’

English teacher Angela told us: “Nobody wants to think that’s going to happen to their house so there was an element of me burying my head in the sand.

“My house is in a horrendous state, it’s basically collapsing around me.

“We’ve got tens of thousands of homeowners impacted, and the Government hasn’t even done a scoping scheme to find out how many houses are affected – but you’re talking about tens of thousands of houses.

“In one of my gable walls, I have cracks that I can put my hand into. In my front room when it rains it’s actually raining inside.

“I’m up all night spinning a towel trying to keep the water out.”

‘IT KILLLS ME’

She continued: “If there’s a red weather warning I have to get the kids to a hotel because the house is not structurally sound. I have serious internal cracking, the blocks above my bed are exposed, there’s no plaster or anything, it’s freezing, you can see the wallpaper flapping.

“We’re basically in no man’s land at the moment.

“It’s really difficult and this is what kills me; I don’t give a damn, we’re adults, we’re grown ups, but the kids have been living with this basically their whole lives. [My son] Seimi is actually living in fear. He keeps asking me, ‘Is the house is going to fall down? Why is the house broken? I wish I had a nice house like such and such, not a house like this.’ It kills me.”

“My house is in a horrendous state, it’s basically collapsing around me.”

Angela Ward

Studies into the impact of living in such homes has been conducted in recent years and shows it takes a major toll on people’s mental health.

The University of Ulster, based in Belfast, found that those living in defective homes suffer from depression, suicidal ideation, and PTSD similar to that experienced by those who have suffered a natural disaster.

Some 30 per cent of respondents said they have experienced severe depression after finding out about the state of their house.

HEALTH IMPACT

Meanwhile, 25 per cent suffered from extreme anxiety, and 33.5 per cent had experienced suicidal thoughts.

Angela told us how her four children – Charlie, Anna, Beth, and Seimi – are paying with their physical health, as well as their mental.

The 49-year-old mum explained: “Anna, 16, has asthma. We’ve had a terrible time with her asthma, because the house is riddled with black mould. We have mushrooms growing on the walls, that’s how bad it is.

“What we’ve been fighting for is 100 per cent redress. We weren’t looking for anything in terms of the mental or emotional impact, all we were looking for was our houses to be put back, like the Leinster pay right’s scheme where basically the housing agency came in, took the keys, gave them accommodation, fixed their houses, painted their houses, totally finished them and they were left ready to move back in.”

Angela said the current scheme is only benefitting a small portion of the community.

FAMILIES IN LIMBO

She stated: “But we’re left here having to find all this money, having to be project managers, and there’s huge shortfall so it’s a scheme that works for people that have money, the ability to project manage, access to alternative accommodation who don’t have additional needs. We have a lot of people who have children with disabilities, so their houses would have been adapted and they can’t get accommodation that’s suitable.”

The devastated mum also slapped down the idea that the builders or homeowners are to blame, saying it’s the Government’s responsibility to ensure the bricks are up to standard.

She explained: “It was no fault of the builders, it’s not shoddy workmanship, what happened was the quarry was allowed to sell bricks that weren’t up to regulation.

“It’s leaving families in limbo – in absolute hell, your house isn’t mortgageable, it isn’t sellable, and you’re completely trapped.

“I come up the road from work and my stomach drops when I look at my house.

“This is meant to be your safe space, you want to come home to comfort and you come home to hell.”

FIGHTING FOR YEARS

Protest marches were held in Dublin in June and October 2021, with thousands of people attending to highlight the crisis.

Angela’s husband, Deputy Ward, has been fighting for years to see the issue solved.

He said that the “abandoned” residents of Donegal should be provided with housing until their properties are fixed.

The 48-year-old said: “Officially we’re at seven or eight thousand trying to get on the scheme but actually we’re talking about 25,000.

“People’s homes are crumbling, their lives are crumbling, they don’t have the financial resources to go onto this scheme.

“There’s people suffering constantly and my office is inundated with this, it’s a mental health issue.

“We need a modular home solution so we can move people into the module homes, demolish the houses and rebuild them and move them back.”

And he confirmed that the current scheme is not working.

Charles said: “One person can’t get on the scheme because he can’t meet the damage threshold; he’ll have to wait for years for it to deteriorate, and when it does deteriorate, they’ll pull his house down next to the brand new house that was built when we should be pulling them down together and rebuilding them together.

GOVERNMENT RESPONSIBILITY

“The Government needs to put a plan in place for modular homes so they can move them out. People have run out of money and they’re paying rent or they’re paying a mortgage.

“It’s a total abandonment. This has been going on since 2019 and Darragh O’Brien never came up – the biggest scheme in the history of the state and he never came up.

“The Government would like you to believe it’s successful, but if we look at the reality, in three years we’ve had 70 houses rebuilt and out of that 70, 16 were full demolitions, the rest were some form of outer leaf remediation, but that house can’t be sold currently, it’s not mortgageable, because there are still defective blocks in it.

“We need to look at, are these quarries allowed to do this, it’s the Government that’s meant to be responsible (to check).

“Up in Munacha wind farm, they widened the roads to let in the trucks and every single block that was brought in was not from Donegal, it didn’t come from Donegal. What does that tell you? There’s no faith in the product.”

‘FRUSTRATE AND EXCLUDE’

According to Sinn Fein‘s Finance Spokesperson Pearse Doherty, who is himself a Donegal man, just five per cent of the affected homes that have applied have been fixed.

It means that only 108 out of 2,141 applications have been dealt with appropriately.

Doherty said: “What the latest figures show is that the defective concrete block scheme is not working for the vast majority of affected homeowners.

“The scheme is designed to delay, frustrate, and exclude people.

“There have been fewer applications to the so-called enhanced scheme than the original scheme.

“Only five per cent of properties in Donegal have been fully remediated.”

‘SITUATION GETTING WORSE’

He added: “The situation is only getting worse as the grant awards are not keeping up with construction sector inflation.

“Government must go back to the drawing board and introduce an end-to-end scheme run by the Pyrite Resolution Board to ensure 100 per cent redress for all impacted homeowners.”

“It’s leaving families in limbo – in absolute hell, your house isn’t mortgageable, it isn’t sellable, and you’re completely trapped.”

Angela Ward

And Deputy Ward has also warned that a major housing crisis is on the way in Donegal.

He said: “For us to effectively tackle the crisis we would have to be building 700 houses a year. Last year, full housing for all of Donegal was 300 and something.

“We need 2,600 houses in Donegal to maintain the population.

“We have a homeless crisis coming down the road.

“Government say we’re going to commence 30,000 houses – commencements are rubbish, completions matter. You can’t live in a commencement.

“We’re years off Government housing targets; I don’t look at commencement, I look at completion.”

‘IT’S HEARTBREAKING’

He continued: “The average mortgage is between €1,200 and €1,400 a month for these defective home owners. They’re paying that on a building that’s crumbling into the ground.

“They can’t sell their house but the banks still collect the mortgage, but it’s a defective home, it’s only the land that’s on it.

“You can get on with life to a point but your home is where you build your life. I’ve noticed a lot of men who have severe mental health issues. I’ve spoken to men who are so depressed because they feel like they can’t defend their families, men felt like they had let their families down, that they couldn’t help.

“You’re there to protect your family and the next thing you can’t even provide a roof over their head because it’s crumbling down around you, it’s heartbreaking.”