DONEGAL’S NEWEST TD Charles Ward lives in a house that is crumbling. 

Towels are stuffed along the windows in his sitting room because every time it rains, it floods.

The wallpaper in the same room is peeling from the walls, and in the corner where the walls meet the ceiling, damp and mould have led to the plaster collapsing in. 

Large cracks run along the walls of his children’s bedroom.

Ward, who was elected as a TD for the 100% Redress Party in last year’s general election, tells The Journal that it was extremely difficult for him to publicly reveal the conditions of his home.

In a video posted to the party’s Facebook page ahead of the election, Ward walks through the house he built and shares with his wife Angela and their four children, showing the scale of the damage caused by defective blocks.

“There are people up here who don’t have a clue,” Ward says over a coffee in Leinster House. 

“There are people up here who probably haven’t ever looked at that video of my house and realised, ‘Oh, my God, you live in conditions like this’.

“I live like that, but there’s tens of thousands of other people that are living in the exact same conditions, and I have a responsibility to try and get this sorted. I am aware of that responsibility and I take it very seriously,” Ward says.

For Ward and his family, the existing government scheme for people impacted by the defective blocks scandal does not work for their home. 

“I was given the wrong engineering solution.

“For me, per square metre to rebuild my house, I’d have to come up with nearly €200,000. I’m nearly 50. That’s not going to happen. With the majority of people in Donegal [impacted by defective blocks] that’s not going to happen,” Ward says. 

In his view, the situation in Donegal is a humanitarian crisis that has largely been forgotten about by the rest of the country, with families left to deal with the stress and trauma on their own.

“My house will not be standing in six or seven years time.

“I have four children living in a house with bison slabs. It’s unsafe, but I’m one of thousands that are in the exact same position,” he says. 

It was because of this that Ward entered politics, something he never intended to do.

Before becoming a TD, Ward was a healthcare assistant in a nursing home where he worked nights full-time so he could be a stay-at-home dad during the day. 

His entry into politics was fast, having been approached by 100% Redress just shortly before the local elections in 2024.

Charles Ward (R) signing the Dáil register with clerk Peter Finnegan

The party won four seats in that election, but Ward was unsuccessful and left “deflated”. 

Despite this, he was chosen to be the party’s sole candidate for the general election six months later and managed to take the fourth seat in the five-seater constituency with an impressive 6,862 first preference votes. 

Now, as leader of the 100% Redress Party, he is adjusting to life in Leinster House, where he intends to keep the pressure on the Government to improve the existing defective block scheme. 

“I believe I will have a better scheme in place than what is currently in place at the moment,” he says.

Asked what his other top priorities are for the people of Donegal, Ward says, next to housing, it is to make sure that the county gets a surgical hub in Letterkenny.

Under current plans, Sligo University Hospital is the preferred option for a hub for the North West of the country, with no consideration being given to Letterkenny University Hospital (LUH).

This is despite a significant campaign from staff in LUH, some of whom recently met with the Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill. 

“I can understand there’s a frustration going on between LUH and Sligo, where they both need surgical hubs.

“My take on it is, why do we not just go ahead and put two surgical hubs in. It will save the exchequer millions in the long run, it’ll actually be one of the best investments that we do for the North West region, because the North West region in total is underutilised, and it’s underfunded,” Ward says.

Asked about the longer-term plan for his party, Ward says: “In Donegal a year ago we had just come into existence, now we are the third biggest party in Donegal. We have to be there long-term.”

“I believe that we can do similarly again in other places at local and national level.

“The thing about the 100% Redress Party is we come from all forms and all demographics, we’re inclusive. We’re ordinary people who had to form because we felt we weren’t getting any answers politically.”

“Unfortunately, the circumstances we find ourselves in is that we had to take this path, because I felt that the people in Donegal were getting a raw deal. I still feel we’re getting a raw deal, but I have faith and I have hope, and that’s the main thing.”