'You think there will be some sort of support... there’s none': Derry family forced to find £100,000 for defective blocks repairs

Danny and Kate Rafferty, who live a stone’s throw from the border with Donegal, were the first family from the north to publicly confirm that their dwelling was affected by defective blocks after testing was conducted back in 2022. Other dwellings have been confirmed since.

The family spoke of how they have been denied access to the redress scheme introduced by the Irish government and the Northern Ireland government has told them it has no plans to introduce a similar compensation scheme north of the border. This is despite repeated warnings from politicians here that an initial trickle of cases in Northern Ireland could soon turn into a tsunami.

The family have appealed to Stormont Ministers to act now to support families like their own, and to work with the Irish government to introduce a redress scheme north of the border.

Work to remove the rapidly crumbling brick outer walls and the external part of the chimney of the family’s home on Beragh Hill Road in the Ballyarnett area of Derry is already under way and is expected to take around six to ten weeks to complete. They are living in the house while the works are ongoing.

Danny said: “You think there will be some some sort of support and then there’s none. You’re just left to deal with.

"When we got notified that we had defective blocks, we did a lot of research and I have gone to the Mica Action Group and others to see what sort of things were in place. After November 2022 we were in touch with the Council and they put up a notice looking for other people and the council said less than 10 people came forward.

"We have been fighting ever since to try and get support because the Republic of Ireland, their defective blocks scheme is only for Republic of Ireland residents. Even if you own a house in the Republic and you lived in Northern Ireland you are not on the scheme so it’s affected a lot of homeowners from up here. We applied to get on the scheme and they turned us down. I wasn’t surprised but I turned around and said to them according to Article 2 of the Irish constitution I am Irish, I have an Irish passport and even worse, I have worked for 30 years in the Republic of Ireland, paying tax and their PRSI and I’m even entitled to an Irish pension but still not able to get on their scheme. We still write to them and I’ve started to write to the EU as well because of the Irish government.”

Kate, who is from County Mayo, added: “I just think it is so unfair. I have written to the politicians down south asking them ‘why are you not including people up here, when they were good enough to buy products from there?’, and saying we are all Irish people. They’ve come back and said, oh you’ll have to go to Stormont and get them to deal with you.”

"And Stormont has come back and said ‘go away’”, her husband added, alluding to what they say has been the complete lack of assistance from Stormont, despite the institutions getting back up and running since February.

“Apart from the thing from Derry City Council, that has been it really. For Stormont, I have been emailing and trying to contact everybody. We were told that it is because Stormont is down, when it comes back up again it will be better. And it came back up and it wasn’t better. But fair play to them, a lot of politicians have come back and said they will support us.”

Among those politicians who have pledged support are Foyle MLAs Ciara Ferguson and Mark H Durkan, Councillor Sandra Duffy and Minister Naomi Long.

Mr Rafferty said he had also received a letter back from an official from the Department for Communities in the north saying they had looked at the issue but concluded that it was not systemic as the family were at that time the only people who had come forward about a private house. “They would not create a support system for one property, so more or less go and rot in hell,” Mr Rafferty said, as he contrasted this with government’s more proactive response to defective buildings elsewhere in Northern Ireland – something he also raised with Minister Gordon Lyons’ Department.

"I kept on emailing and eventually they came back and said, I would advise you to reach out to the OPSS (Office for Product Safety and Standards) Department in London because they look after all the standards for this type of thing. So I found their email address online and eventually they replied back to me that it was a devolved matter and that Mr Lyons and the Communities Department need to be looking after this and not them. So back again to Mr Lyons, and we got another letter saying, we sympathise with your situation but it’s not a major issue, it doesn’t affect many people. So we have been left in limbo.

"What I have been asking Stormont to do is, it doesn’t matter if it is one case or 1,000 you should be going to the north-south bodies and saying, ‘right, we have got homes up here that have defective block issues, we are going to give them remediation but you should be giving the money to us to cover it because it is their issue after all. If that is the course of action, and I lead the way and they do that, then I reckon other properties with the same problem will come forward then because I know there are definitely ones in Derry.

"I was actually talking to a man who said whenever he sees the cracks appearing he just covers them up, paints the house and hopes for the best. I asked did he get the test done, he said no, that he had a block left over and left it in three inches of water in a bucket for a month and it turned into mush. That was all the test the man needed, Danny said.

Danny said it beggared belief to suggest that the issue of defective blocks, manufactured for around two decades, stopped at the invisible, open border in Ireland; a border across which goods and services are purchased and traverse day and daily.

“Probably about 20 of the 26 counties now are known to be affected now in the south,” he said.

The family also said they were aware of other properties affected in the local area – both social homes and private estates – and agreed with many politicians that the full scale of the problem in Northern Ireland will only be realised in the years to come.

They have been told by some people that they too know their homes have defective blocks, while others on both sides of the border have told them they recognise the same pattern of deterioration in buildings and estates in Derry and across the north. Danny and Kate have recognised them elsewhere too. “These are not settling cracks. Settling cracks are straight lines up and down or they will go with the block,” Danny said.

The couple hope the repair works ongoing on the walls of their home will mean it is stabilised and that the worry and stress is lessened. But that work has come at a major financial cost.

"It’s £100,000, we’ve used any savings we have had. It cost us around £7,000 for the testing. Initially we got a test done that confirmed it and then were told if we were going to claim off the Irish government they would demand the whole suite of tests so we got the whole suite done. Then that came back as positive. We have to remove the outer leaf and the chimneys to roof level. We have to fix up the whole front as well and we don’t know how much that is going to cost as that is not included in the house.”

The couple avoided having to demolish their entire home because of the timber frame and the foundations – built earlier with bricks from a different supplier – were sound. But it is small comfort in what has been a nightmare similar to that experienced by thousands of others across Ireland, but worse in many respects too.

"We’re in the last four years of our current mortgage. We would have been paid off by now,” Danny said.

The couple also referenced the pain and anguish innocent people were subjected to in the Infected Blood and the Post Office scandals, compounded by government inaction or failings, and spoke of the huge toll the defective blocks issue and the long campaign for redress have taken on people in Ireland. “It’s not their fault; it’s not our fault,” Danny said.

Kate added: “It took the thousands and thousands of people to go up and protest outside the government in the south in order to shame them into doing something. Are we supposed to be doing the same thing, us and whoever has houses here or in Donegal from here?”

The Journal had asked the Department for Communities for a response and for information in relation to the number of properties registered as having defective blocks across the north.

A Department for Communities spokesperson responded: “The Department for Communities is aware of the MICA situation that has emerged in other jurisdictions.

"DfC is not currently aware of any data that would suggest there is a systemic issue involving MICA in Northern Ireland at this point.

"The Department will continue to monitor the situation.”