Pat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy.

I might add a few questions as well. I am interested in this whole area of building control regulation and I believe we should be taking it entirely back into local authorities and should have an independent review and inspection regime. I would like a comprehensive inspection regime of all the different stages of construction. I still have concerns that the current BCAR is not doing exactly what it should be doing. While more large-scale developments probably have the resources and skills behind them for assigned certification and auxiliary assigned certification, I do not believe smaller-scale projects would be as strong on the professional side of the regulation.

I refer to the other major issue with building regulation. While we often talk about new builds, much renovation work is going on, extensions are being built and different work is being carried out in commercial buildings where no regulation is being realistically applied. I think fire certification and disability certification have to be applied for and I think it stops there. As a country, we need to educate the people in the value of building control regulation. If we can do nothing else but have people understand it is worth paying that little bit extra for entirely independent inspection, I would be fully in favour of that.

I have several examples, even in my own business, which is the hotel game. I can go back to a very small fire that we had back in the early 1990s, where we zoned fire panels, so we knew it was in a zone but that was a big zone and we had to suss it out. We had a very small fire two years ago but what we had was able to tell us exactly that it was in room 133. Huge advances have been made in fire detection. I have serious concerns about any renovation work that is done where gaps are left in fire safety provision. There is no inspection. From my understanding, there is no inspection with regard to fire safety. One gets a certificate after providing a drawing. It stops there. No fire officer goes out to ensure the information strips are on the door, the doors are closing properly, the sewer pipe going through the wall has been filled in, or to check whatever else. That is not happening. While we are saying the assigned certifier is signing off on it, I still have concerns about it. I am putting my cards on the table.

I had one other constituent who moved into his house 17 years ago but had to move out seven years ago because of an issue. It took seven years to discover what the problem was, and then it took him seven years more to go through the court system. When he eventually got to the court, he was told that he was statute-barred. He wasted €37,000 on legal fees in bringing that case. That was a simple case of the damp-proof course being placed too low, which allowed water to come into the building. I believe, and will be urging my own party, which I think is coming with me, that we need a top-down, local authority approach to building control. We need entirely independent inspection at all the different stages of the building construction industry, and we need to get the people behind us and to educate them in how valuable building control is to them. Mr. Hubert Fitzpatrick said that he would welcome extra resources being provided to the local authorities to allow this happen. I want to ask him whether he would agree that the best place for building control may be with the local authority with a move away from assigned certification and design teams. There are also the smaller developments where the owner of the property has to sign off on a design team and assigned certifications and would have no knowledge of the building industry at all.

Drawings are going in through the BCAR system and I honestly believe that nobody is looking at them. Very few people are looking at construction drawings. I wonder how many developments are actually starting based on planning drawings as opposed to construction drawings. I am concerned that construction drawings are never drawn up for one-off rural houses. I have probably said enough at this stage. I call Mr. Hubert Fitzpatrick.