Derry family's nightmare as home among first confirmed MICA cases in Northern Ireland

Danny and Kate Rafferty first discovered what they thought were settling cracks some years ago, but after more spider cracking on the outer walls of their home tests this year confirmed the presence of high levels of MICA.

The family are now facing a heartbreaking situation, and will need a major loan for repair works just a few years out from paying off their mortgage.

Speaking to the Journal at their Beragh Hill Road home near Ballyarnett, just a stone's throw from the border with Donegal, they described how they built their beautiful home in 2006, and, like many people, sourced materials on both sides of the border, including building blocks from different suppliers. It is some of the latter which have deteriorated, official testing has shown.

Danny and Kate built their current home on land next to Danny's family's home. "Before Brexit came in, you just crossed the border and bought anything. The septic tank; the timber frame was bought in Letterkenny," he said. "We put up the house and after a while we had a few cracks in it and it needed painted anyway and they said, 'aw it's just settling cracks'. Then another few years went by and all the paint was blistering. I phoned a painter and he came up and thought it was because there was no bonding solution. We paid for it to be painted again."

"It didn't seem to last very long, the paint, it just started coming off again like it was damp or something, crumbling off," Kate said, adding: "When we moved in we thought great, nothing wrong with the house, then the cracks started coming. I had a feeling deep down it was MICA. There are more cracks now. The chimneys are bad as well."

Danny added: "I heard about the MICA thing but didn't think it really affected me. But after the second time we got it painted, I thought, this is crazy here, and was asking everybody, 'Is it MICA?', and was told 'no, no, no'. I had a couple of blocks left over outside and I went to move one one day and it just disintegrated in my hands, and I mean disintegrated."

By this stage he was panicking. When an architect came up to visit someone in the area who was getting their house revamped, Danny asked them to have a look at their house. "He looked at it and said, 'I wouldn't be an expert but I think it is MICA, but I've a builder coming up to give me a price tomorrow. He then had a look and said, 'MICA, looks like MICA'."

Danny and Mayo native Kate, who live with their 20-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son, then paid for a surveyor who told them on arriving that he knew by looking at their house they had MICA. This was confirmed after five samples were taken out at a cost of around £1,000 for official testing at labs in Cornwall.

"Because we got the blocks from two different suppliers, the lower samples came back as negative and the higher samples then from the biggest load of blocks, which we got from another supplier, were all high concentration of MICA. I thought what am I going to do here? I wrote to all politicians but got very little back."

Being located in the north, like holiday home owners with a Mica affected property in Donegal, they do not qualify for the MICA Redress scheme as it is at present.

The family has enquired about potential redress beyond the government scheme after learning of action being pursued by hundreds of other affected homes in the south, and their case is in the process of being taken on as the first 'international' MICA case.

Danny also said he has been told that there were other houses in Derry and in Strabane with suspected MICA but that their own may be the first to have proof of where materials originated, as Kate crucially had kept all the receipts.

It is perplexing, he added, that given that the north west has for decades functioned as a single region along a seamless, invisible border which people cross daily for work, trade, education, shopping and visiting family, there still seemed to be a mindset among some that MICA never crossed the border. The couple said they are convinced in fact that there are likely many more MICA buildings north of the border.

"Some people may turn round and say, 'ah you are stupid, you should have got the Derry bricks’ or whatever, but who knew?"

The Raffertys are now facing major costs as they will have to replace external walls and possibly chimneys, with no guarantees on pay outs in a case that could take many years.

"You can't claim from your house insurance. If this house was burnt, hit by lightning, an earthquake, flooding, pipes burst anything I can claim. You cannot claim for defective building materials, blocks being one of them,” Danny said.

"We are not in the Redress scheme. Costs wise, every time I talk to someone the costs seem to have gone berserk," Danny said. "We are coming into what we hoped was the last four to five years of our mortgage. I was hoping after we get that out of the way this would be a relaxing time. Now, if you are talking just the outer skin you are talking £60,000 to £70,000 sterling. Then if we are talking the chimneys the price would increase and we are going to have to move out because there will be no heating or nothing.

"I'm hoping there is somebody going to say, 'you inject this stuff and it makes the bricks solid', but I think I'm only dreaming here," he said. "It's a complete disaster; we're gutted."

It is unclear how many private or social homes or other properties in the north might be in a similar position.

The spokesperson for Derry City and Strabane District Council confirmed that it has been contacted ‘by the owner of a property in this Council area that had received test results indicating that following testing of concrete blockwork samples taken from the property that it was affected by excessive MICA contamination’.

The Council said it is not aware of any other affected properties ‘despite an extensive desktop exercise and consultation’ in 2018, and has no knowledge of any formal redress scheme for owners of properties located in NI that are affected by MICA, but added: “The Council is happy to engage with the property owner to offer whatever advice it can.”

The Council spokesperson added that its Council’s understanding that the relevant UK government department, responsible for the national regulation of construction products is the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS).

In response to a query, the Department for Communities, which has responsibility for social homes in Northern Ireland, said: "The Department has not been notified of any social homes affected.”

Meanwhile affected home owners have been advised that a multi action High Court case is being funded by Defective Blocks Ireland, a not-for-profit group, set up by businessmen Adrian Sheridan and Shaun Hegarty, both originally from Buncrana.

Anyone wishing to find out more about their own homes and the case has been advised that they can contact legal firm Coleman Legal by emailing defectiveblocks@colemanlegal.ie