Government publishes long-awaited legislation to amend mica redress scheme

The Government has published the Remediation of Dwellings Damaged by the Use of Defective Concrete Blocks (Amendment) Bill 2025, a substantial piece of legislation designed to widen access to the redress scheme, update grant rules and address long-standing issues raised by affected homeowners.

The Bill was published on Tuesday 2 December, just hours before it was scheduled for debate in the Dáil chamber. Like the Act it seeks to amend, it did not receive pre-legislative scrutiny. 

The legislation amends the 2022 Act - passed by the Oireachtas and signed into law in summer 2022 but not commenced for a further 12 months - and introduces several major policy changes alongside a range of technical adjustments intended to make the scheme operate more fairly and efficiently.

At its core is a new provision allowing qualifying homeowners to apply for an increased remediation grant.

At present, many applicants are relying on grants calculated using 2023 construction costs, despite facing significantly higher bills due to inflation. Under the original Act, only homeowners who had yet to receive a grant determination could benefit from future increases to grant caps or rates. The new legislation changes that. Now, homeowners who received their determination before 23 October 2024, and who have incurred eligible building costs since 29 March 2024, will be able to seek an increased grant.

This addresses concerns raised by families who saw their costs escalate but were locked out of the higher grants announced last year, including an 8-10% uplift in square-foot construction rates and the 10% increase in the maximum overall grant to €462,000.

However, no relief is offered to the estimated 43 homeowners who completed rebuilds or outer-leaf repairs before the Government’s retrospective cut-off date. They remain excluded from the increased payments. Nor has provision been made to allow ‘side-by-side’ rebuilds on suitable sites.

Reviews of previous decisions

A significant structural reform allows for the technical review of previous decisions made under IS 465.

IS 465, the National Standards Authority of Ireland’s 2018 standard, is now widely accepted as scientifically flawed for failing to recognise pyrrhotite as the primary component in causing concrete to crumble.

With the NSAI currently revising the standard, the Bill empowers the Housing Agency - at the request of an applicant - to reassess earlier decisions and issue a new determination where justified.

This is particularly important because the revised IS 465 will acknowledge pyrrhotite as a root cause of the crisis, allowing homeowners whose properties did not contain sufficient mica to reach the demolition threshold to have their cases reviewed.

The new Bill also doubles the time allowed to complete remediation works and submit all associated paperwork.

Until now, homeowners had just 65 weeks to finish demolition and construction - and complete extensive sign-off documentation. This will now increase to 130 weeks. The notice period required to seek an extension is also reduced from 12 weeks to a more realistic two weeks.

Read more: Hundreds of mica-affected homeowners exposed in data breach

Due to the Department of Housing's mendacious approach in drawing up the original legislation, grants must be calculated using the 2007 building regulations, and those long past their sell-by-date standards have not only created energy-efficiency problems but also contradict national climate targets. Rather than rolling everything into a single application system which any sensible Department would develop, affected homeowners have been required to make separate applications to local authorities (for demolition/rebuild) and to the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (for retrofitting grants).

However, councils and the SEAI were legally barred from sharing information due to GDPR restrictions. The new legislation seeks to circumvent the problems the State created for itself by conferring new data-sharing powers, allowing SEAI to share necessary information with local authorities, including Donegal County Council.

The Bill also introduces new appeal rights covering increased-grant applications, technical reviews and revised determinations, while extending the appeal period from 28 to 90 days.

The 2022 Act had tightly defined “relevant owner”, excluding some people who were separated, divorced or cohabiting. These individuals will now be allowed to qualify as relevant owners, subject to certain conditions - a change aimed at preventing delays and unfair exclusions in cases involving inheritance, separation or informal shared ownership.

The Remediation of Dwellings Damaged by the Use of Defective Concrete Blocks (Amendment) Bill 2025 will come before Dáil Éireann on Tuesday 2 December for its second-stage debate.

It will then proceed to committee stage, where Opposition TDs are expected to table further amendments, before returning to the Dáil for report and final stages. After that, the Seanad will go through the same rigmarole and examine the Bill in the same sequence.

No timeline has been set out as to when the Oireachtas will conclude its work and send the legislation to President Catherine Connolly for signing into law.