Mr. Brian McKeon:

In regard to foremen, we have more supervision on site now than ever before. Over the past few years, there is more onus on employers to educate and to keep educating our foremen and engineers and so on. There are more courses available. Many younger foremen have been told in college to insist on receiving annual continuing professional development as part of their agreement. There are more courses run by the Construction Industry Federation, CIF, the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, RIAI, and Engineers Ireland to which we send our people responsible for building and complying with regulations and drawings and specifications. It is better now than it ever was before.

Builders phone quarries and builders providers in good faith and order material. We order it according to the specification that is in our possession at the time and we get it delivered to site. We get supporting documentation which says the material is capable of doing what it is meant to do. We have previously been given that documentation by the quarries even though the material did not meet the specification. There were not sufficient regulations. Since then, there are new regulations, particularly in regard to stone, which is detailed in SR 21. There is a regime for ordering stone. When my foreman picks up the phone, he needs to know exactly what stone he is ordering and where it is going. There is a regime where we have to monitor it and know where it is going. There is an onus on us to get it independently tested. Along with test certificates and more documentation than ever before to say that it is fit for purpose, many of my colleagues contact independent laboratories to get verification that the stone is suitable for purpose. We need to do that more and more because we are relying on documentation and there is always plenty of documentation.