Mr. Alan Baldwin:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to present to it this morning.

I am a chartered building surveyor and the current chairperson of the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland, SCSI. I am also the managing director of the Building Consultancy, a private consultancy practice offering building surveying and design and project management services. I am joined by Kevin Hollingsworth, a chartered building surveyor and past chair of the SCSI building surveying professional group committee. He is also the managing director of Omega Surveying Services and is actively involved in remediation of multi-unit complexes.

The SCSI is the largest professional body representing a membership of over 5,000 chartered surveyors and the home of 12 professional disciplines that straddle property, land and the construction sectors. One of the SCSI’s main priorities is to advance and maintain standards in our built environment in the public interest. It is closely associated with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, RICS, the global organisation representing over 100,000 chartered surveyors worldwide.

Building surveying is a discipline which offers a variety of services across the entire built environment. The knowledge base and competence of a chartered building surveyor is broad but based on a solid technical understanding of how buildings work both technically and functionally. Their role, therefore, touches on all aspects of the construction and property industries, allowing them to approach their jobs from a holistic angle. Some of their areas of expertise include design, building pathology advice, pre-purchase advice and building surveys, dilapidations, property management, contract administration, project management and statutory compliance.

In terms of statutory compliance, building surveyors are one of three disciplines designated under the new Building Control (Amendment) Regulations, BCAR, to be design and assigned certifiers. Assigned certifiers are responsible for co-ordinating the inspection and certification of building projects and provide the final certificate of completion when building works are finished and ready for occupation. During the implementation of BCAR, the SCSI welcomed its introduction and actively participated throughout the Department’s stakeholder consultation process. The SCSI, through the construction industry council, works closely with the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government to develop the documentation assisting certification of BCAR on ancillary certificates.

The SCSI is supportive of the new building control regime and acknowledges it is a significant improvement from what was in place previously. As a body, we believe that consideration should be given to the following matters. There should be no opt-out provision for one-off houses and the Government should ensure all builders are subject to the same standards set down in BCAR. The assigned certifier should be independent and preferably not a direct employee of the developer or builder. There should be additional resourcing of independent oversight by local authority inspection staff to support a culture of transparency, traceability and accountability, as well as to assist in deterring cases of non-compliance with appropriate standards of buildings. We also contend that a statutory system should be put in place to ensure only those builders and specialist contractors who are competent in their specific areas of activity are regulated to offer their services, while appropriate sanctions are in place to protect the public from such legacies experienced in recent times.

We welcome recent developments in home insurance policies covering latent defects insurance. The policy typically is a first-party insurance cover where the policyholder does not have to go through the builder in the event of a claim and the policy attaches to the dwelling and transfers to subsequent purchasers during the ten-year cover period. The policy must cover defective workmanship, design and materials and include structural failures, fire safety, mechanical equipment and drainage. Such cover should provide for a sensible level of cover and not be constrained by low thresholds where the owner is required to pick up the cost of artificially low levels where excesses apply.

Recent regrettable high-profile failures, particularly in multiresidential complexes, were in evidence with the former regulatory system. With that in mind, the SCSI wrote to the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government in March 2017, highlighting concerns and putting forward a set of recommendations to address these issues. A copy of this submission has been made available to all committee members.

The SCSI suggests the development of a methodology to appropriately assess high-risk legacy buildings in consultation with industry and the Government to be carried out in a proportional manner. Many developments may not have any recourse available to them to rectify the defects or do not have the funds available to solve the issues. We recommend consideration be given to the financial impact on schemes where serious deficiencies are identified and investigate possible solutions to fund such repairs.

Much of what we will be discussing today is likely to focus on our building control oversight and legacy issues coming to the fore in terms of building defects. As Ireland is now in the midst of a housing crisis, we need to plan for the future so we learn from mistakes of the past. Our construction industry is only now showing signs of gearing up to cater for demand for house purchasing, which was blighted with problems since the downturn. Our organisation has been active in response to our national housing crisis in highlighting the barriers to construction and housing supply.

In May 2016, the SCSI published a comprehensive report on the costs of delivering a three-bedroom semi-detached house to the market in Dublin. We will shortly be publishing figures on the delivery of apartments to the market that will identify the costs of construction, as well as the additional costs associated with regulations, taxes, levies, finance and land. All of these are part of the overall story in providing value for money and cost-effective housing solutions for those requiring accommodation.

As a professional body and professionals working at the coalface in the industry, we are here to share our experiences and thoughts regarding potential solutions. However, it is up to policy makers to implement regulation changes which will work for our industry. With this in mind, we remind the committee of the SCSI’s recommendations to tackle the legacy issues pertaining to multi-unit complexes that have come to light through the media. We have recommended that a mechanism is established whereby studies of high-risk multi-unit residential buildings, built in the recent past, are considered regarding serious immediate building defects impacting on safety health and well-being of its occupants. Serious consideration should be given to setting up an emergency fund to deal with the most urgent of issues such as notification of fire to occupants, the risk of fire spread from apartment to apartment and from common area to apartment. The CIRI, Construction Industry Register Ireland, register of competent builders with specialist contractors and individual crafts and construction entities should be established on a statutory footing to protect consumers in the future against recurring defects of this kind. CIRI registration is conditional on compliance with all statutory regulations and appropriate competence in the designated category of service provided. The SCSI proposes the Government considers setting up a loan facility over a relatively long term for building owners for serious building defects which would be outside the scope of any emergency scheme and where there is a current funding shortfall.

We request the Government reviews these proposals and considers convening a multi-stakeholder working group, involving relevant industry players and Government agencies, representatives of owner management companies and licensed managing agents.