Roughly nine and a half thousand homes, by current local-authority estimates, are cracking apart because the blocks they were built from should never have left the quarry. The State’s response — the Defective Concrete Blocks Grant Scheme — is the largest remediation programme in the country’s history, recently reworked by the 2025 Amendment Act. Navigating it well, and knowing what legal claims survive alongside it, is what this practice area is about.
Mary Molloy Solicitors are solicitors, not engineers, architects or building surveyors. Nothing on this page is a technical assessment of any property or works. Defects claims stand or fall on independent expert evidence — a chartered engineer’s or building surveyor’s report — obtained early. Scheme rules, grant rates and legislation in this area change frequently; confirm the current position before making any decision.
The Scheme, Current Shape
The 2022 Act framework (commenced June 2023) runs through the designated councils — Donegal, Mayo, Sligo, Clare, Limerick: application, damage-threshold assessment, a remediation option from full demolition-and-rebuild to lesser works, and a grant capped at €462,000 on rates revised late 2024. The Amendment Act 2025, partially commenced in February 2026, then reshaped the edges that hurt most: owners who hit the old cap can now apply for increased grants under the new provisions; the works window doubles to 130 weeks; conjoined-dwelling flexibility and strengthened building-control enforcement were enacted with phased commencement. Every parameter here is legislation-in-motion — current-position checks are part of every advice. Full analysis: the 2026 scheme changes.
Where Legal Advice Earns Its Keep
- Option and threshold disputes: downgraded remediation options and threshold refusals challenged through reviews and, where determinations are legally flawed, public-law routes (with our judicial review practice alongside);
- Increased-grant applications: the new s.17A pathway run on airtight documentation;
- The litigation remainder: claims against solvent suppliers, professionals and insurers where they survive limitation — assessed with blunt honesty about dissolved defendants;
- Transactions and family arrangements: selling, buying, transferring or mortgaging a DCB-affected home — disclosure, price mechanics and scheme-status undertakings;
- Shortfall mapping: what the grant will not cover in your case, and what that means for the decisions above.
A Blocks-Affected Home?
Scheme navigation, a disputed determination, or a sale in the middle of it - one call maps your position and the paper to build.
Call 01 5827148