Mr. Eamon O'Boyle:

On the point raised by Deputy Ellis about foremen and clerks of works on building sites, the traditional form of general foreman had huge advantages. I can relate an anecdote in regard to one inspection I was involved in recently where parts of a fire wall were not constructed correctly and when I asked the clerk of works, he said that that happened the week he was on holidays because the rest of the place had been done properly. That level of on-site supervision was hugely important.

Mention was made by the other speakers and some Deputies of prosecutions. As someone who was fairly close to the building control and regulatory systems, I know of very few prosecutions that have taken place here and some of those that have taken place were on the administrative provisions in terms of people having started work in advance of the granting of a fire safety certificate and so on.

Regarding the defectiveness of materials the Deputy raised, in my particular domain regarding fire safety and so on, all of the materials we get are manufactured materials so it would not necessarily arise. On the issues the Acting Chairman raised as to whether the work should be undertaken by the local authority or within the private sector, I would not have a major opinion on that but it certainly needs to be done by somebody. The general view among industry practitioners is that the current system is very stringent. I believe it deserves a chance to work. That is fine when there is a fire consultant, mechanical and electrical people, structural engineers, civil engineers and so on within the design team. That can work perfectly well but it is an issue in the smaller scale projects.

Mention was made of buildings where changes are taking place and so on. Mr. Fitzpatrick mentioned the requirement to obtain a fire safety certificate for changes of use. However, there are three categories of buildings, namely, offices, retail and industrial buildings to which material alterations can be made without the need to make an application for a fire safety or a disability access certificate. There is a requirement to comply with the building regulations and our experience is that people we would deal with, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry where compliance is a huge issue, would require one to go through the same discipline, albeit not involving the local authority, in terms of doing it.

Value for money was mentioned earlier. We cannot get away from the fact that building projects are big and cost a lot of money. It is the type of industry where everybody is being squeezed constantly on margins but it is big expenditure and when so much money is being spent, it is important to do it correctly and to have all the professional advice one needs to do it well, and to make sure it is being done properly.

The Acting Chairman mentioned a constituent who had a house in which the damp proof course was installed incorrectly. While I do not want to reiterate the point, we have evidence from NAMA that it had to spend in excess of €100 million to remedy buildings in which it was involved so we cannot be certain that we have a good national stock of buildings. It is evident that there are legacy issues, and that is something we need to quantify to see what all of that means by way of detailed surveys being taken. It can be done over a period of time, but it is something that needs to be done.