{"id":572573,"date":"2026-07-28T19:28:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T19:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/572573\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T19:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T19:28:12","slug":"defective-concrete-homeowner-awaits-over-e90k-to-finish-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/572573\/","title":{"rendered":"Defective concrete homeowner awaits over \u20ac90k to finish works"},"content":{"rendered":"

A defective concrete homeowner, who was an ‘early mover’ with the scheme, is awaiting \u20ac94,000 in retention and retrospective payments in order to finish their build.<\/p>\n

100% Redress Party Councillor Joy Beard said many homeowners are struggling to complete their homes as they are yet to access money allocated to them.<\/p>\n

Under the Defective Concrete Blocks Grant Scheme, a 10% retention is withheld from the final grant until matters such as works, paperwork and professional sign-off are complete.<\/p>\n

Additionally, there are retrospective higher grant payments for eligible homeowners, which allows them to claim for the increase in the cap on grants.<\/p>\n

This must be applied for via the local authority.<\/p>\n

Cllr Beard said one homeowner she has spoken to is still awaiting retention and retrospective payments, as well as engineers’ fees,\u00a0 totalling \u20ac94,000.<\/p>\n

She ‘needs this to finish her home.’<\/p>\n

Cllr Beard outlined how, even with this payment, the homeowner, who is in her 70s, will still be ‘thousands of euro in debt.’<\/p>\n

“Early movers shouldn’t have been disadvantaged and the grant increase should have been automatically put on to their grant amount.<\/p>\n

“The fact you have to go in and physically apply is unfair. People are being penalised as they moved early.<\/p>\n

Cllr Beard added: “She is now awaiting \u20ac94,000 and while some builders are able to absorb that, many smaller builders can’t.<\/p>\n

“It’s difficult for smaller builders and some homeowners are being asked for these payments upfront.”<\/p>\n

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“It’s a lot of money to be out.<\/p>\n

“It’s causing a great deal of concern and unnecessary stress for people at the end of their build.<\/p>\n

“This isn’t the first person to reach out to me.<\/p>\n

“Some people have taken out a loan to cover it, which they then pay back after the final payment, but not everyone has that option.<\/p>\n

“These people are just trying to finish their builds.”<\/p>\n

Cllr Beard said that, ‘ultimately, upfront costs need to be covered’.<\/p>\n

In March, Donegal County Council announced a prioritisation process for retrospective payments.<\/p>\n

They said that, with more than 77% of all applications to the enhanced scheme located within its administrative area, it is managing the majority of the volume of cases.<\/p>\n

The council added that given the scale of applications, the processing of retrospective payments would take time, and a structured prioritisation approach was required.<\/p>\n

You can read more about that here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A defective concrete homeowner, who was an ‘early mover’ with the scheme, is awaiting \u20ac94,000 in retention and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60],"class_list":["post-572573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}