European Commissioner to visit Donegal to see defective concrete blocks devastation

Midlands North-West MEP Ciaran Mullooly has confirmed that European Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné will visit Ireland early next year to see at first-hand the devastation caused by the defective concrete blocks scandal in several locations and to advance the EU’s infringement proceedings.

The meeting took place in Strasbourg following Mullooly’s sustained campaign to push the Commission for urgent action on behalf of homeowners across Donegal and other affected counties.

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“I met Commissioner Séjourné in his office in Strasbourg and explained how thousands of homes in rural Ireland, particularly in County Donegal but also across my constituency of Midlands North-West and more than 20 other counties, were built with concrete blocks containing excess mica,” MEP Mullooly said.

The Commissioner, who is responsible for EU industrial strategy, construction product standards and the Critical Raw Materials Act, asked for a detailed account of how the crisis had developed. Mullooly outlined the Defective Concrete Blocks Grant Scheme, noting that while it was enhanced in 2021, it still fails to deliver full redress.

“Families remain deeply concerned that gaps in compensation will leave them with debts of tens of thousands of euro,” he said.

In its formal reply to his Parliamentary Question, the European Commission confirmed that no data identifying defective blocks had been uploaded by the Irish authorities to the EU’s Information and Communication System for Market Surveillance (ICSMS) between 2020 and 2024.

Mullooly raised this directly with the Commissioner: “The absence of Irish entries does not mean there are no defective products, it simply shows the system isn’t being used properly,” he said. Commissioner Séjourné agreed that the situation was unacceptable and pledged to tighten EU law to ensure Member States cannot ignore or delay their reporting duties. “The Commissioner expressed his unhappiness with the current voluntary reporting system and said he intends to bring forward legislation giving much more teeth to the process,” MEP Mullooly said. “He committed to working with my office on tightening this legislation and addressing the weaknesses exposed by Ireland’s case.”

Mullooly said the Commissioner also accepted his invitation to visit Ireland after January 2026 to see affected homes for himself and to review the Commission’s progress on infringement proceedings.

The meeting follows months of work by MEP Mullooly to keep the issue at the top of the EU agenda. In August, he visited affected homes in Donegal with Deputy Charles Ward TD and Councillors Ali Farren, Joy Beard, Thomas Sean Devine and Denis McGee of the 100% Redress Party. Days later, he tabled a Parliamentary Question asking for Ireland’s compliance data on concrete block standards, and in September, he directly challenged Commissioner Séjourné in the European Parliament plenary in Strasbourg, warning that lives will be lost if action is not taken.

Mullooly has also proposed bringing representatives of the 100% Redress campaign before the European Parliament’s Housing Committee to explain the crisis directly to MEPs.“I promised the residents I met that I would not let this drop, and I will not,” he said. “The people living in these crumbling, unsafe homes did not create this problem, and I will continue to fight for full accountability and justice.”