Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for missing the start of the meeting. I had a question to ask in the Dáil Chamber, but I followed proceedings on the monitor. When I was listening to some of the contributions, I did a quick search of classified advertisements on Google. I do not know whether the CER relies solely on the public, but through Google I have a list of five or six people who are advertising as gas installers and I doubt if any of them is registered. All of their telephone numbers are available. It is remarkable that one has to rely on the public to detect this activity. One advertisement has been placed by a person who will undertake a gas installation, wire a house and do painting and timber work. This is very serious and no laughing matter. I am stunned that the CER is relying on people to telephone to complain and that only 45 cases have been taken.

The reason I am annoyed about this - I ask the Chairman for his indulgence - is a young woman in my constituency, Miriam Reidy, who went with her family to enjoy a hen party in west Cork. With her sister and members of her extended family, she stayed in a hotel in which she died from carbon monoxide poisoning. During the inquest it was mentioned in evidence that the amount of carbon monoxide in the room had been beyond detectable limits, in other words, it had exceeded the maximum limit. The room had been flooded with carbon monoxide, such that it is amazing that only one person died in the hotel that night. Ms Reidy's family in Ballyhahill, west Limerick deserve to know that this issue is being taken seriously. Their daughter went away for a weekend and never came home. The reason she never come home was that the boiler in the hotel had not been installed correctly. We do not have to wait for another incident; this girl is dead as a direct result of something that should never have happened. It was a failure of the system.

The Dáil is discussing a law that has been introduced to reduce speed limits in housing estates because a young child was killed. It took that child's death to reach consensus in the Houses that something needed to be done. For the life of me, I do not see how the status quocan be defended or why the commission, the Department and the regulatory authorities cannot admit that the current system is not working. This girl's memory deserves more than defending the indefensible. She is not coming home and never will. Her family have been left with question marks over how someone installed a boiler in good faith but incorrectly and no one inspected it. There was a lack of regulation and a total collapse of the system in protecting an unsuspecting person. The boiler was not in a home but a hotel. It could have been in a nursing home, a private hospital, a public hospital, etc. We should drop the defence because the system is not working. If it had been working, this girl would have been back at her job in AIB the following Monday. Instead, her family had to accept her remains. That is the reality. As the system does not work, I would like people to stop defending it.