An astonishing two out of three apartments and duplex homes built in Ireland over the past three decades have defects, the Government has revealed.
This equates to between 62,500 to 100,000 units constructed between 1991 to 2013.
These are different to the thousands of houses caught up in the defective mica/ pyrite scandal which is likely to cost the state €5 billion to fix.
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Junior Minister James Brown confirmed the apartments and duplexes affected had fire safety, structural safety, and water ingress defects.
They were found in 50 to 80pc of the units built during that time - 62,500 and 100,000 apartments and duplexes.
He said: "The average cost of undertaking the remediation of defects is likely to be approximately €25,000 per apartment or duplex which translates to a potential overall total remediation of between €1.56 to €2.5 billion.
"It is no small task to determine how best to put in place support for affected homeowners in a considered and structured way."
He confirmed a Government working report on the issue found there is no single cause of defects.
He added: “Given that the overall potential scale and estimated cost to fix the problem is so considerable it will take many years to address all the buildings affected.
“Resources and work will therefore need to be prioritised. In this regard it would not be appropriate for those in charge of defective buildings to delay the undertaking of any remediation work that is considered necessary from a life safety point of view.”
He also revealed that Housing Minister Darragh O Brien will now be bringing proposals to Cabinet as quickly as possible to sort out the apartment defects scandal along with proposed new legislation.
West of Ireland Independent TD Sean Canney who raised the issue with Minister Brown blamed the whole building defects failure on past decisions within the industry to get rid of good practices .
He fumed: “Hundreds of thousands of families have been put into a situation where they bought a house or an apartment in good faith, took out a mortgage on it and are still paying the mortgage for a home that is now defective.
“There is widespread anger about what has happened to innocent people who were trying to pay their way in life to make sure they had a home for their family.
“They were not relying on the state to provide for them. They were not asking the state for anything other than good governance and a proper regime to ensure that any construction done in this country could stand up and be looked at with pride."
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