A motion was put forward at the January meeting of Mayo County Council to have the sliding scale per square foot in the recently introduced defective concrete block scheme for pyrite effected homes, removed.
The motion was jointly put forward by Fine Gael councillors Neil Cruise and Jarlath Munnelly and read: "We respectfully seek the support of our colleagues and management of Mayo County Council, to write to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Darragh O’Brien, to petition him to remove the sliding scale rate per square foot introduced in the recent Defective Concrete Blocks Grant Scheme 2021 and replace it with a uniform rate per square foot, that is commensurate with current building costs."
Speaking on the motion, Cllr Cruise said: "Recently we had the Defective Concrete Block Scheme 2021, which was brought in by Minister Darragh O'Brien just before Christmas, which replaced the previous scheme. There are better conditions in it, but one thing that has become obvious, in a standard-sized house it is going to leave people out of pocket between €65,000 and €75,000 - which is a huge amount of money for those who have suffered the problems over the past number of years.
"This problem has come to light a while ago and we are only standing up to it now, basically doing something about it now. It is great there is something being done, but having a sliding scale per square foot does not make any sense. For our citizens who have suffered through this problem for so many years - and there is more and more people finding out they have problems with defective concrete blocks - as I say, we need the council to work on there behalf and we have put this before you today.
"We have to look at this and cope with the situation where there is going to have to be rental properties made available for the people who are affected; and there is a defiance in them, Tom Gilligan (director of services, Mayo County Council ) has told us numerous times about this at Housing SPC meetings - so there has to be some sort of a scheme there, there are huge amounts of houses in Mayo not being used; if there was a grant made available to people that is overseen, that could bring older houses into use - it could cool down the property market a bit in the county. Out of sympathy and empathy, we have brought this motion."
