Una Mullally: Mica scandal should be a moment of national reckoning

Houses in Donegal are crumbling, and we may have reached a point where the mica scandal – where concrete blocks with mica were used in the construction of homes and other buildings – can no longer be ignored, as buses roll into Dublin tomorrow filled with people whose homes are falling apart.

The layers to this scandal are sedimentary. But the trauma many families are facing, as the telltale spiderweb cracks begin to show on their houses, is being compounded by the State, which is dragging people through an unnecessary and unfair process. At the heart of the demands of those who, through no fault of their own, have been placed in an incredibly distressing situation is a desire for fairness. After years of campaigning, being ignored, gathering their own data, going down legal culs-de-sac, and pleading with successive ministers for housing, a redress scheme was established.

This redress scheme is not sufficient. Unlike the pyrite redress scheme, under which people in the east of the country dealt with an awful situation in many homes, the mica redress scheme is only offering 90 per cent compensation, with the homeowner obliged to make up the other 10 per cent. For many that is an insurmountable cost. The pyrite redress scheme compensated people for 100 per cent of the cost of remediation.

Not only that, but in order to even qualify for the mica redress scheme, homeowners have to pay for two tests. The first is a visual appraisal by an engineer to determine whether it looks like a house has been affected. That costs €550. The second test then extracts samples from the blocks. That costs about €5,000. Many people, naturally, can’t afford that. There have also been issues with people accessing credit from banks – who may also hold the mortgage on the property – in order to pay for the tests.

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On top of that, those who have to move out of their homes and rent somewhere else in the meantime are not being compensated for the cost of that rent. Like everywhere else in the country, rents in Donegal have skyrocketed over the past decade thanks to Ireland’s national housing crisis.

“One story is worse than the next,” one woman whose house has to be demolished told me. She has yet to find somewhere to live while it’s being rebuilt. And who can afford to pay both a mortgage on a house they’re not living in and rent payments in the middle of a rental crisis? People are borrowing money from friends and family, spending what little savings they have, and scrambling to save parts of their houses, as the scheme also does not compensate internal refurbishment. Imagine trying to extract a kitchen or a bathroom in full from a crumbling house?

Immense scale

What began as an issue assumed to be confined to Inishowen has spread out to Letterkenny and across Donegal, and indeed to Mayo and other counties. It's not confined to privately built homes. Social housing is impacted, as are many public and community buildings. "The scale is immense," one campaigner told me. "There are people out there in Donegal who think they're not affected because it's not in their own four walls of their home, but it's in the walls of their health centre, their community centre, their school."

After a year where many have experienced financial hardship, why is the Government so lacking in empathy on this issue?

The supplier of many of the blocks, Cassidy Bros, has said they met all the required standards at the time and that other providers had the same problems. However, there are serious questions to answer about how this happened – and these questions should be answered through a now essential public inquiry.

The Irish State never properly dealt with issues in relation to oversight in construction, building standards, and the quality of materials that emerged during and after the Celtic Tiger. People don't just need compensation, they need justice, transparency, and accountability. Otherwise, how do we know this won't happen again?

The people dealing with mica in their houses do not have the luxury of time. They have nothing to be ashamed of, although you can imagine the stigma and the reluctance many – and their neighbours – have in facing this horror. This is a national scandal. But the grinding delays have, remarkably, not broken the spirit of those seeking justice. These people have done nothing wrong, yet at every juncture they have had to fight.

Forgotten county

Why is it that houses affected by pyrite in Dublin and Leinster deserved 100 per cent redress, but houses with mica in Donegal only 90 per cent? What does that say about how we value people in different parts of the country? Donegal is often labelled the forgotten county, and here you have it. Why does the Government consistently ignore and underfund this part of the country? That is a choice. After a year where so many have experienced financial hardship, why is the Government so lacking in empathy – and action – on this issue? It's simply about doing the right and fair thing.

Dubliners know well what a multifaceted housing crisis looks like. The mica scandal is yet another rotten part of a broken housing system. People in Dublin need to show solidarity, hit the streets, and declare their support for those in Donegal and elsewhere who have been living this nightmare, when they gather at the Convention Centre Dublin at 1.30pm on Tuesday and march to Leinster House at 2.30pm. The housing crisis is a national one, with regional idiosyncrasies. Whether it’s homelessness, extortionate rent, investment funds sucking up estates, or houses literally crumbling, this is a moment where everyone can stand in solidarity with those travelling to the capital from Donegal and demand fairness.