Politicians to be quizzed over redress after hundreds attend meeting

Local and national politicians are to be asked to respond in person to homeowners demands for changes to the enhanced defective blocks redress scheme at a public meeting later this month.

The meeting on March 26 follows a public meeting in Burt on Monday night which was attended by hundreds of affected homeowners.

The meeting was called by a united front of defective concrete block campaign groups to gather contributions for a so-called People’s Document.

The campaign groups  100% Redress, Mica Action Group and Redress  Focus Groups, came together to work on a joint initiative to define “a true 100% redress scheme”.  

Verbal and written inputs from Monday night’s meeting are being fed into the working document which is expected to be completed before the end of the week. It will then be sent to “every political party and politician for their response”.

On Monday night the groups presented the detail behind “the four principles of 100% Redress”: property, process, people and support and prevention.

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Many of those attending the meeting in An Grianan Hotel in Burt had to stand due to the large number that turned out.

The initiative comes ahead of a 12-month period which will see three elections - a general election, local elections and  European elections.

Organisers say the next stage of the initiative is to give  elected representatives the opportunity to address affected homeowners directly with their response to the Peoples’ Document.  

Chair of the Mica Action Group, Lisa Hone, said there was “an absolutely huge turn out” at the meeting.

“It was a positive meeting. The working document contains the points that would constitute a real 100% redress,” she said. 

“The document reflects the homeowners' lived experience and what it is going to take to achieve a true 100% redress scheme. The meeting was important to make sure that we had all the feedback that we need. There were some really interesting and valid points made and we are going to take those and feed them into the working document and come up with the final version.” 

Ms Hone said the next meeting will be a forum to allow politicians to respond to the people. “We will be saying to them:’Here you go, here is a document that reflects the living experience of homeowners and what it is going to take to produce the real 100% redress scheme. What is your response to this?’ We want to see all the responses to it. The 26th is about the politicians addressing affected homeowners.”