Man pic: Deputy Pearse Doherty, Deputy Eoin O Broin and Deputy Padraig Mac Lochlainn at a home on Inch Island.
Donegal’s Sinn Féin TDs have called on banks to contribute to the Defective Concrete Block (DCB) redress scheme.
Deputy Pearse Doherty and Deputy PádraigMac Lochlainn were commenting on the leaking of the Attorney General’s advice to the government on the issue which was published on ‘The Ditch’ website yesterday.
The website reported that the Attorney General, Paul Gallagher, suggested that, as a matter of legal principle, it would not be unfair to require that the banks make some contribution to the scheme in respect of the benefit they would receive.
According to Sinn Féin, payments from the state to affected homeowners would help banks secure their loans because the value of affected properties would be maintained.
“This latest leaking of the Attorney General advice to government is further evidence of what we have always said: the banks should be contributing to the government’s defective blocks redress scheme,” Deputy Pearse Doherty.
“It seems government have no interest in even asking them to do so. We now must ask why this is. Why was our advice and the advice from the Attorney General not listened to? Why was so much of the Attorney General’s other advice regarding saving the state money listened to and not this?”
Deputy Mac Lochlainn added that Sinn Féin has been calling for banks to contribute in some way to the redress scheme, given how much they will benefit from it.
“As far back as March 2021, I called on the then Minister for Finance to ensure that the banks made a contribution to the cost of the Defective Concrete Block redress scheme,” he said.
“It now turns out that he ignored both me and his own Attorney General. The government must now explain to us why this was the case. What is their justification?”
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