Donegal County Councillor Liam Blaney has criticised the lack of action and updates on the MICA redress scheme for Donegal homeowners.
The comments came yesterday as it emerged the scheme is still awaiting sign-off from the Attorney General – four months after being sent for final review.
Cllr Blaney said “almost absolutely nothing has been done” since the scheme was first made public in 2018.
He said the public was made to believe that redress and repairs would begin in Spring 2019, but what followed was “political stunts” via funding announcements.
Speaking at the monthly county council meeting, Cllr Blaney said that he knows three homeowners in Fanad who had such little faith in the scheme that they carried out their own repairs.
Cllr Blaney also criticised the elected council’s inaction on the issue.
“Six months ago we agreed to set up a MICA committee. We never had one word about it since, not a meeting, nothing.”
In response, Mr. Joe Peoples. Director of Housing, Corporate & Cultural Services, said the next stage for MICA redress is the announcement of the scheme, which is hoped to take place imminently.
Mr Peoples said the testing and categorisation protocol has been developed and homeowners will be provided with professional technical support from engineers when the scheme gets underway.
Cllr Blaney expressed his hope that when the scheme takes in applications that the council will be “upfront with the people concerned”.
He asked that all correspondence on the scheme is made public and that an outdated sentence on the Donegal County Council website is removed. The sentence, published in July 2019, says: “it is expected that the scheme will open for applications in the autumn.”
Meanwhile, speculation is rising about an announcement of the MICA scheme this Friday 31st January.
The Fine Gael manifesto states: “The Government is committed to helping to fund the remediation (or repair) of homes affected by mica and pyrite under a rolling funding programme, prioritising those worst affected first. To date, almost €126 million has been provided under the Pyrite Remediation Scheme. The latest scheme will be published on 31 January.”
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