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Thousands of people protested in Dublin in June in support of families impacted by mica and pyrite. Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie

Criticism of council after 19 rejections of pyrite homes in Mayo overturned on appeal

Applications had been rejected despite engineers’ reports and tests confirming the presence of pyrite.

MAYO COUNTY COUNCIL has come under criticism after its rejection of 19 applications for the Defective Blocks Scheme was overturned on appeal.

The scheme was set up to provide financial assistance to people whose homes were built with concrete blocks containing mica and pyrite.

Over the summer a number of impacted homeowners in Mayo were told that they had not provided sufficient evidence of damage to their homes, despite their submissions of engineer reports and test results confirming the presence of pyrite in the walls of their houses.

In the case of one homeowner who spoke to The Journal in August, the council’s own assessment report noted pattern-like cracking present in the external walls. Despite this observation, the council’s rejection letter to this homeowner stated “pattern cracking is not present”.

All 19 rejections that were appealed have now been overturned and these homeowners deemed eligible for the the scheme.

Barbara Clinton from the North Mayo Pyrite Group, speaking to Midwest Radio today, said this situation “should never have happened” as all of the applicants had reports from the approved list of qualified engineers outlining the damage to their homes.

She said these reports “should have been taken as Gospel” but instead the council had “done a box-ticking exercise from a desk and rejected those homeowners”.

“They didn’t even do a visual inspection of the homes and then those homeowners were put through six weeks of torture – and let me tell you, it was torture for those families – waiting for a decision,” she said.

On Monday impacted homeowners had heard from the council that a decision on their applications would be delayed by two weeks, but yesterday they were all contacted by the local authority informing them that their rejections had been overturned.

“Obviously Mayo County Council have not got a clue what they’re doing,” she said.

Sinn Féin TD for Mayo, Rose Conway-Walsh, said she was glad the council “had seen sense”, but questioned why these applications were ever rejected.

It was very obvious to me – and I’m not an engineer – from the houses that I visited in this appeals process that there was pattern cracking. I do believe they should have never been refused in the firstplace and I don’t know why they were. To me there’s no real evidence that they should have been.

“These homeowners were put through an awful lot of undue stress on top of the stress they were already experiencing.”

The Mayo TD said she is concerned for the mental wellbeing of impacted families, particularly the children living in homes damaged by pyrite.

“One woman was telling me her three-year-old daughter, when she saw another house said ‘Mummy, that house is cracked just like our house’,” she said.

“There was a couple outside the Dáil today from Ballina and it was their fifth weddding anniversary – they spent it with placards outside the Dáil, with their children at home.

“Another woman outside the Dáil lives on her own and is solely responsible for the mortgage, she said the bank won’t lend her another €40,000 to meet the gap between what’s allocated in the scheme and what it costs to repair the house.”

She said the objective of government has to be to end this stress for families as soon as possible.

The appeals committee is made up of three people, two of whom are external to the council. In a statement, Mayo County Council stated that the committee is independent and noted that it had overturned the original decision.

“The council is satisfied with its handling of the applications,” it said. “The council, as outlined at the September council meeting has received 106 Stage 1 applications of which 74 Stage 1 confirmation of eligibility letters have issued to date.”

The council said it was “very mindful” of the acute stress and trauma involved for homeowners who have defective concrete blocks and “it is not the council’s intention to add to this”.

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    Mute mary carey
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    Oct 1st 2014, 12:31 PM

    I know I’ll get slammed for this, I hope he’ll be in quarantine for 3 wks after arriving back from Monrovia.

    102
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    Mute Ryan Carroll
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    Oct 1st 2014, 3:17 PM

    There is nothing unreasonable about that. It’s actually the most common sense measure we can take to protect ourselves. The longest period for Incubation of ebola zaire subtype is 21 days. So to be on the safe side that count should start on the date of entry and they should be released on day 22/23

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    Mute Neal Ireland Hello
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    Oct 1st 2014, 6:46 PM

    Mary do you know anything about why it is spreading in West Africa? It’s because it’s in the third world with no education, access to information or modern medicine, which means people substituting all that with medieval beliefs, doing stuff like hiding the bodies in their homes in case they get hauled away. None of which would happen here. We are safe. Please relax and stop watching so many movies and / or Fox News!

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    Mute mary carey
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    Oct 1st 2014, 9:06 PM

    Em @neal…. I have a degree in biochemistry, and an MSc in Pharmacology.
    I’m not some hysterical housewife worried about the end of the world because I watched too many Netflix re-runs.
    I am an educated, perceptive individual who made a remark that by the WHO’s standards is reasonable. So take your somewhat snotty attitude and shove it up ur hole!

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    Mute Range Rover P38
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    Oct 1st 2014, 10:03 PM

    Did you read the thing? ffs

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    Mute Range Rover P38
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    Oct 1st 2014, 10:04 PM

    Is ‘hole’ a technical term?

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    Mute Solas Aireáinnach
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    Oct 1st 2014, 12:58 PM

    Journal says we should be worried about Ebola not for ourselves but for Africa. We should be greatly concerned for ourselves. Infected aid-workers & immigrants coming here are real cause for that concern. Aid money, aid workers, we can’t do enough for them but still we dare consider ourselves. It would be “racism” to do so.

    First case of Ebola diagnosed in United States
    http://www.thejournal.ie/ebola-united-states-1699703-Sep2014/

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    Mute Ryan Carroll
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    Oct 1st 2014, 2:44 PM

    The aid workers are getting blood tests before they come back, so they and the doctors coming home are the LEAST at risk of spreading it.
    The odds of someone getting past all the exit screening OR a time fluke like the US guy where he goes to the exit screening without showing up as infected and making it through…the odds of that happening again and on top of that it coming here are incredibly low. There has only been one case of European ebola in human history and it was outside the EU.

    Since there are no direct flights, the only possible route now are refugees or economic migrants. The former coming from that region should be disallowed totally, and everyone else should be subject to a time quarantine from the time they get into the country to the time the virus takes to incubate (assuming infection on the date of entry just to be safe). We should be making a deal with the UK to prevent anyone from the region coming here to begin with.

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    Mute David Jordan
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    Oct 1st 2014, 4:20 PM

    “The aid workers are getting blood tests before they come back,”

    No they are not being tested.

    The virus does not show up unless a person is showing symptoms, when the viral load in blood increases. Testing people who are incubating Ebola will give a false negative result, Dr Kent Brantly tested negative at first and then later tested positive when his condition deteriorated.

    “When Specimens Should Be Collected for Ebola Testing at CDC”

    “Ebola virus is detected in blood only after the onset of symptoms, usually fever. It may take up to 3 days after symptoms appear for the virus to reach detectable levels. Virus is generally detectable by real-time RT-PCR from 3-10 days after symptoms appear.”

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    Mute Munster2014
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    Oct 1st 2014, 2:03 PM

    I’d be more concerned about these do gooders carrying the virus back to Ireland with them. I personally think that any aid worker who visits the hot zones where this virus exists should not be allowed to travel back to Ireland until the full incubation period has passed. If they do get infected, no repatriation should be made.

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    Mute John Rabbett
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    Oct 1st 2014, 2:16 PM

    That’s a bit Harsh, without do gooders we would be in the dark ages when it comes to medicine…

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    Mute Ryan Carroll
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    Oct 1st 2014, 2:38 PM

    ”DO GOODERS?” you mean those incredibly brave, selfless medical professionals to are going over and risking exposure to a nasty and deadly virus to help stop innocent people (including CHILDREN) from dying a horrible death?

    Cop on to yourself mate, those people are the best of what humanity has and they are doing an incredible wonderful thing. They are taking every precaution under the sun to avoid gettin infected. They are wearing full PPP suits most of the time ffsake. They are getting blood tests etc before they come back and any one of them coming back infected have been flown back under a full isolation set up.
    Luckily the rest of us are not cold hearted monsters.

    Do you know what this virus does to you? It turns your organs into pulp and you die of internal bleeding and multiorgan system failure it’s one of the most painful deaths imaginable, you’re ok with that happeing to innocent children and for the rest of humanity to sit there and do nothing to help them?
    It’s easy to say all this from a keyboard when you don’t have to set eyes on the victims of this thing, maybe if you had you would not be so cold.

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    Mute George Grey
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    Oct 1st 2014, 12:37 PM

    We can drop anywhere we want throughout the world, but when it comes to doing something positive western governments are very slow to react. This epidemic will come to haunt us if we do not do the right the right thing. The WHO are screaming out for funds and government personal…..boots on the ground…..to help resolve the crisis. Yest there seems to be little happening. Meanwhile, as we see in this report, thing just get worse. Africa’s plight is the world’s shame.

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    Mute Sakura
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    Oct 1st 2014, 1:18 PM
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    Mute Ryan Carroll
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    Oct 1st 2014, 2:41 PM

    It’s indeed disheartening and annoying to see reactions like that, I have to admit when I saw that some of them had murdered doctors who came to help them I began to think ‘f—k them maybe we should leave them there to die’ but think about it:

    1. A great deal of those dying are children, and they should not be left with no hope
    2. We should not let the few morons prevent the rest getting help
    3. Most of the conspiracy theories causing those reactions you cite above are coming from western websites some of which are frequented by a few of our nuttier posters on this site.

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    Mute Solas Aireáinnach
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    Oct 1st 2014, 2:56 PM

    George
    €700 million a year in foreign aid, billions of Irish aid to Africa throughout the decades as well as Irish volunteers going over to build their medical, educational & engineering works, contradicts your assertion we are very slow to help these people, we have done nothing but help them & are called racist as a thank you.

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    Mute David Jordan
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    Oct 1st 2014, 4:43 PM

    “the west has been trying to help them for decades. They destroyed the Ebola centre in Liberia within two days. They need to help themselves too.”

    Very true. And ironically, the holding centre at West Point, Monrovia, Liberia, was ransacked because people thought Ebola was a hoax, a hoax that started by the corrupt Liberian government in order to attract foreign aid. They are as sick of foreign aid as we are.

    President Sirleaf of Liberia made 2 of her sons ministers in the government and made another son Vice President of the Central Bank, they then sold 25% their forests to foreign logging companies; Norway recently bribed them not to cut down their forests.

    It was deforestation, human encroachment and the bush meat trade that likely caused this Ebola epidemic.

    “Why Liberians Thought Ebola Was a Government Scam to Attract Western Aid” http://www.thenation.com/article/181618/why-liberians-thought-ebola-was-government-scam-attract-western-aid

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    Mute Jonny Baxter
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    Oct 1st 2014, 6:18 PM

    4. A tiny minority of people is not representative of the whole.
    5. Simplistic thinking is simplistic.

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    Mute Garry Dempsey
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    Oct 1st 2014, 3:35 PM

    Block everything from Africa stop shipping containers leaving stop people travelling out of Africa quarantine all of Africa from the rest of the world so it doesn’t become world wide and I look out for myself not Africa…..

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    Mute Jonny Baxter
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    Oct 1st 2014, 6:16 PM

    Ever so slightly disproportionate there Garry.

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    Mute Éire Calling
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    Oct 1st 2014, 8:14 PM

    Just like other African exports such as AIDS, tuberculosis, Leprosy (yes, remember the 2 cases of that last year!) etc all reintroduced/massively increased thanks to wide open mass immigration from the dark continent (and other third world places) Ebola will find its way here eventually to add to the diversity of unwanted diseases in Ireland.

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