Mica Action Group hits out at ‘incredible’ €1.5bn housing underspend

The Mica Action Group has labelled a €1.5 billion underspend by the Department of Housing during a period when homeowners took to the streets to highlight the deficiencies in the Government’s defective blocks redress scheme as “incredible”.

Recently released figures show the department had an underspend of about €1.52 billion of its capital budget between 2020 and 2022. Just more than €1 billion of that was allocated for social and affordable housing.

The department has attributed the underspend to the impact of Covid-19 on the construction sector, and the challenges arising from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Mica Action Group said the underspend was at a time when homeowners affected by defective blocks were “living through every type of housing emergency possible”, adding that a fraction of the sum would have funded a dedicated project management team to deliver the redress scheme.

Chair of the group, Lisa Hone, said the underspend came at a time when Donegal was suffering from “a double whammy” of housing charges and the impact of the defective blocks crisis.

She said the delays in the enhanced redress scheme, estimated to cost €3.2bn, which is still not operational, highlights how such an underspend could have been put to better use to help affected homeowners in Donegal.

She linked the delays in the scheme directly to the under-resourcing of the delivery of the scheme.

“A very, very small fraction of that would have provided a project management team to deliver the scheme, because as far as we are aware there is no dedicated team that is working on this in the Department of Housing which is very disappointing considering you are talking about a multi-billion euro scheme.”

Draft regulations for the enhanced scheme were published earlier this year and the deadline for submissions was March 14.

“The next stage is to get feedback from the department,” Ms Hone said. “They have said they will engage meaningfully, and I hope it is a meaningful engagement. Every single submission that has been put in is based on the knowledge that we have from the grassroots, to try and actually get this scheme to be a more positive scheme for those who have to avail of it.

“We know that every single delay is more anxiety for homeowners and it is a really unpleasant place to be in.”