“Someone is going to get hurt” – Fresh concerns for home owners after ‘mica’ report

A Buncrana man has warned that ‘a gable wall will fall out of a house on someone’ unless urgent action is taken on the thousands of houses in Donegal that are affected by a deficiency in the block work.

It is said that anything up to to 5,000 homes are at risk from the problem, caused by a mineral called muscovite mica in concrete blocks.

The long-awaited report of the Expert Panel on Concrete Blocks was published last week.

The dwellings are single storey, dormer and two-storey with both housing estates and one-off rural houses affected and it is said that the houses are located within the Inishowen and Letterkenny Municipal Districts.

The McDaids, Eddie and Maria, appeared on RTÉ’s Prime Time last night to discuss their plight.

Footage showed Mr McDaid able to easily puncture a hole in the blocks with his foot.

“It’s crumbling away here,” he said.

“It’s getting no better. The blocks are clean rotten. They’re getting no better. The weight from above is just pushing them down.

“No-one is admitting liability. No-one wants to know about you.

“Someone is going to get hurt before it’s all over. A gable will fall out of a house on someone. I wonder who’s going to take responsibility then? That is the sad part of it. It will be too late then.”

Maria McDaid explained that the couple were in a catch-22 situation as they were unable to rent another property as well as paying their mortgage.

Some of the houses, built between 1999 and 2010, are said to be ‘crumbling down’ due to the blocks that have been deemed not fit for purpose due to the excessive amount of mica.

Donegal County Council has found that 60 percent of social houses built in Inishowen between 2000 and 2008, and 23 percent built in Letterkenny, are suffering structural distress and cracking.

Eileen Doherty, from the Mica Action Group, said: “People had high hopes and people expected to see more in the report than this. People have homes that are effectively worthless and which are uninsurable.

“People are living in homes that are condemned or in homes that they are fearful of collapse in on top of them and their families. Four years on we’re still in the same position.”