‘You can't enjoy your house, you can't enjoy living in it’ – Mayo Pyrite Action Group lays bare the reality of defective block scandal
Homeowners from Mayo affected by defective concrete blocks have told an Oireachtas committee that families across the North West are being forced to live in crumbling homes while enduring year-long waits for test results, appeals and the rebuilding process to begin.
Appearing before the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage earlier this week, Margaret Walsh and Josephine Murphy of the Mayo Pyrite Action Group outlined the human toll of the crisis.
They renewed calls for 100pc redress, urgent reform of testing systems, stronger quarry regulation and improved mental health supports for affected homeowners.
Ms Walsh, who is from the Erris region, told the committee she is currently trapped in limbo.
Having confirmed the presence of pyrite through a private test, Ms Walsh remains locked out of the Defective Concrete Block Scheme as her home has not yet reached the required damage threshold.
She has to let the damage get worse before her home is deemed eligible under the current scheme.
You can't enjoy your house, you can't enjoy living in it
When asked about conditions in her home, she described the reality she and her family are living with.
“For the children themselves, they are quite embarrassed and ashamed of their house because it is deteriorating inside.
“There’s lots of black mould, it smells, it's harder to heat it – the heating bills are higher, I have to have dehumidifiers in the rooms to make sure they take away moisture,
“I have had a gas leak because of the damp coming in the cracks – remember, I can’t fill them up to stop the damp coming in because I need to meet the damage threshold and [let it] get worse,” she explained.
She said it feels like: “You can't enjoy your house, you can't enjoy living in it. I am still paying a mortgage on it.”
In her opening statement made to the committee, Ms Walsh explained her home was recently valued and said it was “now worth the value of a site with services”.
This is not an unfamiliar story as she described homeowners who are “stuck in properties that are losing value every year, through no fault of their own.”
Ms Walsh has two teenage sons at home and two children attending college who return during holidays and weekends. She told the committee her overriding concern is “planning for the future”.
Even if she is accepted onto the scheme, she said the delays are daunting, from testing to demolition and rebuilding, and not to mention, she will also have to find rental accommodation in the middle of a housing crisis.
“There is nowhere. There are people facing eviction in Erris in Belmullet at the moment, there is nowhere to rent,” she told the committee.
The strain of the situation has taken an emotional toll.
“I am really angry to be honest. I work for the HSE, I only ever wanted to be a mother and do my job – I didn't want to be sitting here writing opening statements,” she said.
While Ms Walsh added that she enjoys the advocacy work of the Mayo Pyrite Action Group, she explained, “It wasn't in my life plan to be doing this.”
An important topic that came up during the committee meeting was the regulation of quarries.
Ms Walsh told the committee she had submitted a Freedom of Information request to the National Building Control and Market Surveillance Office seeking details about quarry inspections in Mayo.
She asked how often inspections take place and whether results can be accessed by the public, but was told that the information cannot be shared due to commercial sensitivity.
“I should be able to walk into a restaurant and know that it's been inspected and I'm not going to get poisoned if I buy and eat a meal there,
“I should be able to go to a quarry and see the results of their testing and not have the information withheld because it's commercially sensitive under FOI,” she said.
In her closing remarks, Ms Walsh spoke about the mental health toll of the crisis, describing the stress placed on people who have to watch their homes deteriorate while also facing financial strain and uncertainty.
It is a long process, it almost fills a decade of your life
Under the current scheme, homeowners are offered six counselling sessions through the Mind mental health charity. However, she said this was not adequate.
“There are lots of people outside the scheme who could do with support in that regard as well,” she explained.
In an attempt to find that support, affected homeowners in Mayo have set up their own group. Ms Walsh said many participants are women, ranging in age with some members in their 80s, who are navigating the crisis alone.
“It is a long process, it almost fills a decade of your life – from when you notice it to when you get your keys and move back in,” she said.
For Ms Murphy, chairperson of the Mayo Pyrite Action Group, the journey through the crisis stretches back 14 years to when she first sat down with Mayo TD Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh to find a solution to her situation.
“Nothing has changed,” Ms Murphy said. “Quarries are still self-regulating, aggregate is still not being tested and being put on the market.”
She warned that “tons of aggregate” will continue to be used in future construction and “will all be defective because quarries aren't regulated.”
Ms Murphy told the committee that in 2002, an EU technical committee published two harmonised aggregate standards for implementation across member states.
Ireland implemented the standards in January 2004, she said, but did not enforce them.
“They are still not enforced today. Then they [the government] make up this IS465 that is not fit for purpose. All they had to do was put in the standard [set out] here,” she said.
She argued that proper enforcement of the EU standards would resolve the crisis.
The only way we are going to get to the truth of what happened is to have a public inquiry
Having attended the earlier session with departmental officials, Deputy Conway-Walsh told witnesses in the second hearing it was “very clear that there aren’t any answers, the people involved didn’t have answers for us today.”
Raising an issue on behalf of Ms Murphy, the Sinn Féin TD asked whether geologists could be appointed to quarries as an interim protective measure to ensure that aggregate leaving sites is fit for purpose.
She acknowledged, however, that it remained unclear whether such a proposal would be acted upon.
Ms Murphy said it was frightening to think defective aggregate may still be entering the market.
“There are young couples going around looking at estates and trying to raise a mortgage of hundreds of thousands now – chances are that those blocks are going to be defective,” she said.
Deputy Conway-Walsh referenced an Engineers Ireland report as she said Ireland is “at the start of a 50-year issue in acknowledging that the standards aren’t fit for purpose.”
“The only way we are going to get to the truth of what happened is to have a public inquiry, and the first question in that public enquiry has to be was this avoidable – and I think we all know the answer, that it was avoidable,” she added.
This article has been funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.