Kenny and Kathleen Rodgers welcome us into their home in the kind of gentle, unassuming and friendly way Donegal is known for.
At their home in Carndonagh, Kathleen explains that her family has lived there for generations.
They never thought they would be able to buy here, until Kenny received redundancy money from the local alcohol factory. It meant they could build their home on an empty plot, landscaping the area with trees and plants.
The place has become a sanctuary for her grandchildren, too. Kathleen’s face lights up as she speaks about them. A glimmer of sadness remains as she does, as she explains how her grandson asked her ‘Granny, why did you buy those blocks?’
The Rodgers family is one of an ever-growing number in Ireland who live in a home unfit for purpose, built as it was from faulty blocks with unsafe levels of mica minerals.
Kenny shows us how the ones left outside crumble under the slightest manual pressure, to dust in his hands. Hundreds of them are packed on top of one another, with a family underneath - waiting.
This is the reality of the mica scandal, and families say that the redress bill proposed by the government leaves them looking for thousands of euros that no bank will lend to them.
“I used to come back from work, see the gable there [with cracks] - you just couldn’t get away from it, it took all the joy from the house,” Kathleen says.
“Every time you would look out you’d think: ‘Oh god, is that another crack?’ Sometimes you just don’t look at it because you’re scared to look at it. But sometimes you just can’t get away from it, it’s there all the time.
“This is supposed to be your safe place, where you can relax, live and be happy. Loads of times I have thought about painting and filling the cracks and it might be better-looking but it makes no difference.
Kenny explains how he tries to keep the house in a reasonable condition as the blocks themselves fall to pieces, in dire need of demolition and rebuilding.
“Every year, just before the winter, I fill in the cracks just to stop the water getting in, freezing and expanding and it makes the cracks explode.”
Kathleen speaks about the ‘agony’ of waiting on a scheme fit for purpose; the Mica Action Group says the one proposed by government has at least 35 major, outstanding issues.
"It’s just prolonging the agony. Sometimes we think ‘will we just go for this scheme?’ or will we just take down the gable? It’s €6,000 to get an engineer. It’s just so hard to know what to do to do right.
“At the end of the day, all we want to do is get our house fixed. When that 90%-10% scheme came in, I thought we could cover the 10% but it’s delays, money out and then you start to wonder - are we going to remortgage? What can we do? We’ve been in limbo since then.
“It’s getting more and more expensive to heat the house in winter time because of the cracks. It seems to just be throwing good money after bad, which we don’t have because Kenny is pension age and I will be in February. That is our working life over, there’s nothing more than we can do.
READ MORE: 'People are suicidal - I've thought about it myself': Mica homeowners on the brink
“Where can we go? [Our remaining money] is just to live on now. We really need the government to put in a 100% redress scheme and to take it over. Have people come and assess the houses, say what they are going to do and [guarantee] that this will last. That’s all we’re asking for.”
The day-to-day realities of living in an unsafe home undermine the most basic decisions a couple in their situation can afford to make, as they explain.
“Our central heating isn’t working because the boiler needs to be replaced and you’re wondering whether to put in a good boiler, a second-hand boiler or do we just hold off for the money we need to fix the house? You just can’t get away from it,” Kathleen says.
Kenny agrees: “At the end of the day, the house might have to be demolished, so why keep pumping money into it? You just don’t know what you’re doing.”
The personal impact and family stories linger long after you leave the area.
“It affected me very badly,” Kathleen says.
“I found it very stressful and I still find it very hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel. I have suffered a lot with anxiety from this, which I used to never be. My dream had come true when we moved into this house.
“Our grandchildren used to come here for Christmas, we had Santa here. It was just fantastic. Now, even my youngest grandson will say ‘Granny, why did you buy those blocks?’ He doesn’t understand but he’s reared now listening to ‘mica, mica mica.’
“When he’s out there he’ll be saying ‘Are they cracking any more?’ A child of 9 shouldn’t have that but that’s the life they’re living. He’s an expert in Covid and he’s now an expert in mica!
“But he’ll say ‘why did you buy these blocks?’ I’d say ‘we didn’t know’ and he says ‘but yours aren’t crumbling yet’ - he’s always trying to make you feel better.”
Kenny paints an everyday picture that is just as bleak.
“When you’re away somewhere and you’re having a great time, when you come back and look at the walls it just brings it all back to you then.”
So where does the blame lie, in their eyes?
“I feel like everybody has let us down. The government has let us down, Donegal County Council has let us down, the blockmakers - who never once admitted it was their fault.
“The builders said they did it according to government specifications. If you made something to the government specification and then you had a problem, if I was the block-maker I would have gone to you and said ‘we will do whatever we can, we’ll go with you to tell the government because this was their specification, they were in the wrong.’
“So who was in the wrong? The government in the amendments, they shot down going after the concrete-makers.
“We feel we’ve been let down by the block-maker, by the council - who are not helping in any way or pushing for this scheme or for the people - and the government. It is our constitutional right to have a home and when you have a home, you are entitled for it to last more than 14 years.”
The contrast of the old and the new is one that stands out most starkly to those who are from the area for generations.
“When you look around Donegal you can see walls of houses that were built hundreds of years ago. They didn’t have anything fancy, they had manual labour and stones - they are still standing, yet our houses are cracked after 14 years.
“There’s something badly wrong, somebody was at fault. Someone should stand up and say ‘look, it was our fault, we’ll fix it.’ That is all we want. We want our home fixed, we want to live the rest of our days in a house we created and looked after and to leave it to our next generation.”
The apparent lack of coherence in regulation across sectors sits uneasily with Kathleen.
“I worked in the deli in SuperValu for 14 years - it was unbelievable how much regulation [there was]. The health woman just appeared, took samples of what you had made, and took it away to get it analysed. If anything wasn’t right, you were notified straight away that it wasn’t up to standard. They would close down your kitchen.
“I didn’t know much about the building trade but I presumed that in all industries the government did the same kind of regulation. But obviously it wasn’t, it seemed to be self-regulation. You have nobody to answer to, so these companies were producing blocks that weren’t of standard and there was nobody checking them, nobody answering to the people to whom they sold the blocks.
“I felt the Mica Action Group put up so many amendments and they weren’t addressed at all. People have been living in these houses for 20 years, have reared their families there, times were different. Now they want to downsize.
“The way that the cost of living has gone, you’d understand. But they are not allowed to downsize. They are not allowed to cover the foundations. I don’t understand much but if your foundations aren’t good, why would you build good blocks on unsafe foundations? That’s a recipe for disaster.”
As we leave their home, sated from tea and deeply affected by their story, Kathleen and Kenny have their final say in the hope that the government will listen.
“We feel like we’ve been left. This has all been rushed through the Dáil before they went off on their holidays. They went on their holidays and we were left in limbo, now they are coming back again now.
“Now they are so busy with the cost of living, keeping their jobs and giving themselves €6,000 raises. We’re still stuck in the same hell that we were when they went on holiday and had a brilliant one without any worries.
“We were here, and there are the cracks. You start to wonder if it’s going to get cold and split more.
“Some days I don’t even look at them because I could nearly cry when I see them.”
