Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations.

I have seen it all when it comes to building over the past years. I was at many meetings about pyrite, mica and so on. The witnesses mentioned a number of things about local authorities and more resources, including fire officers and such. There is no doubt that we have many more problems. I know we have a massive complex in Finglas, on the Finglas Road, where there are fire issues, as the witnesses are probably aware. Fire-stopping is an area that the witnesses mentioned and in which we need more expertise and to have people on-site and giving advice. We have seen it happen there. We have also seen the mica issue in Donegal. It has not been properly addressed, even now, and it is a massive issue. I know Ms Ní Fhloinn mentioned that the law is stacked against homeowners who discover defects. The witnesses said this and I believe that is true at present. There are still many issues there. One of the issues the witnesses mentioned was the transfer of policies. It makes sense that there should be some way to transfer those policies over. Just because someone else gets a place should not change what a person is entitled to in those areas.

I have a concern about what the witnesses said on self-builds. They mentioned that people can opt out of the building control amendment regulations, BCAR. I do not know whether that is down to cost or something else. The witnesses might be able give an explanation on what they mean by people being able to opt out. I believe we should have the construction industry register Ireland, CIRI. Some builders behaved very poorly indeed and in some cases, I consider the behaviour to have been criminal. We cannot afford to have such builders and those people who were on site and who took part in some of this coming back. Some of the construction I saw was just appalling and I went to many estates and had a good look at them. The certificate of compliance has to be properly enforced. We have to make sure that we have better standards than what we had before. What happened in the past is just not good enough.

Foremen on sites was a big thing in the past. That seems to have gone downhill for some reason. We do not seem to have that emphasis. We had fewer problems when we had foremen on sites. I do not know if that is Mr. Hubert Fitzpatrick's experience, but it is my experience that shortcuts were taken during the so-called boom. That disappeared. I also worry that, over the years, there were practically no prosecutions or actions taken against many of these builders. We have seen all these things that have happened, all the bad building and some matters bordering on criminal, and yet we have never seen any real action taken against these people. I do not know if the witnesses have opinions on that.

The last thing I want to mention is about quarries and builders and the defective materials that came from quarries and builders' suppliers. I did not really hear any mention of that issue. What is the opinion of the witnesses on that? Is there a need for more controls in this regard? Some very good controls were in place in the quarries in the south of the country but in the north of the country, where most of the issues of mica and pyrite arose, the quarries were a big problem and do not seem to have had the controls and proper mechanisms in place. I would like to hear the witnesses' opinion on that too.