MEP says 'powers that be don't want to accept reality' of defective blocks/mica

Irish MEP Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan has said he believes the ‘powers that be don’t want to accept the massive reality’ and bill relating to buildings impacted by defective blocks/ ‘Mica.’
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The MEP spoke to the Journal in Inch as he visited an affected home as part of the three-day conference on ‘The Science and Societal Impacts of Defective Concrete,’ which he helped fund.

He outlined how the ‘big thing’ he took from seeing the impact of the crisis at first hand and from hearing experts and affected homeowners speak at the conference is that there are ‘heads in the sand’ in government.

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"I don’t think the powers that be want to face the massive reality this is and the overall bill. If you look at all the houses that are going to be affected, that bill alone is going to be massive and then there’s the bill for rented houses, public buildings, farm buildings etc. We’re going to have to do it all up, work out how much it is and how to resolve it. And then, totally separately, we’re going to have to work out how it never, ever happens again.”

Irish MEP Luke Ming FlanaganIrish MEP Luke Ming Flanagan
Irish MEP Luke Ming Flanagan

The MEP said that there will not only be the financial bill of fixing buildings, but also ones for mental health and social issues, which will increase ‘exponentially, if you don’t deal with it.”

Mr Flanagan said the government needs to accept the issue goes wider than mica, pyrite and pyrrhotite and outlined how experts have said ‘you’re now also looking at iron sulphides’.

He said the government needs to look at what experts are saying, get its ‘head out of its a**e’ and ‘deal with this problem’.

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Mr Flanagan highlighted how, while some people across the country may ask why taxpayers have to pay the price to fix the issue, ‘the reality is, as a State and as as community, when one person has a problem, we all band together, as a society’.

"It’s the same way we don’t educate our own kids or collect our own past. The State does this in a collective way and when the State lets people down in a collective way, it has to come together in a collective way’.

Mr Flanagan said the defective blocks crisis represents a ‘massive failure’.

He outlined how he had listened to ‘many articulate, well organised people’ at the conference in Letterkenny, who know how to work on the issue, but these people ‘are unfortunately not in control of the levers of power’.

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Mr Flanagan added that, on a European level, campaigners are looking at a number of angles, including highlighting to the Budget Control Committee, how various monies from Europe were spent on buildings, such as community centres, which are now falling down.

"I find Ireland tends to act when it’s embarrassed before Europe, more than anything else.’

He said he would continue to support the campaign as much as possible and act as a ‘conduit’ for campaigners with the European Parliament.

The conference can still be viewed on Youtube

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