Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the three presentations. By way of introduction, with these two hearings and the report that will arise from them we are hoping to not so much focus on the past but to try to come up with what we, as a committee, think are sensible recommendations to Government for both legislative and policy change. While we are conscious of the high profile cases that have spurned our interest as politicians, we are also conscious of the fact that, to date, most of those have been pre-2014 developments. Therefore, what happened in those instances is not necessarily as applicable to the regulatory regime we are currently examining. Having said that, I have some specific questions for Ms Orla Hegarty and Mr. Alan Baldwin and then some general questions.

One of the things I am trying to get my head around in terms of the regulatory regime is the theoretical and actual relationship between the certifiers under the BCAR and the building control inspectors in the local authorities. Ms Hegarty has commented on it. Will she talk through it a little more? From the outside, it seems like there is a privatised self-regulation or paid-for self-regulation while, at the same time, there are independent local authority inspections. It does not seem to me that the two fit together clearly or well. What is Ms Hegarty's view?

I raised my next question at the last hearing. We get wildly differing figures on the BCAR costs. Ms Hegarty outlined some figures. However, Ronan Lyons, for example, has published figures for multiple unit developments. These figures are in the region of €27,000, just for the BCAR elements. He is clear that there is no comprehensive audit or research and that these are just snapshot figures. I am interested to know where people think the average figures lie. Do we need to do some more significant research or keep some kind of an audit to track those costs so that we have actual data rather than the snapshot data we have to date?

It is obvious that there is a huge complexity of professionals, from the developer to the architect, involved in the design, building, and certifying etc. and there are many bodies regulating them or there is self-regulation. Even when the construction industry register Ireland, CIRI, goes on a statutory footing, it will only cover some of the professionals involved in the construction end. Does it make sense to have such a fragmented system? I am interested in hearing all three panellists' response. Is there a better model to standardise - not centralise - or to create a more coherent way of managing all of it, both in terms of registration and when something goes wrong. If home owners want to make a complaint, to whom do they make it? Are the procedures and all of those types of things the same?

Ms Hegarty mentioned an independent inspection regime. We discussed this at the last hearing and an obvious issue was how long it would take a local authority to acquire the capacity for this. Even before the recruitment embargo and the consequent reduction in numbers, the building control sections were pretty small. What numbers would be needed? This is a very big policy proposition and, while I have a lot of sympathy with it, if this committee is to make recommendations it needs to be realistic in terms of the cost implications to the State and the time it would take. Ms Hegarty also talked about warranties, a national fund and bonding. I would be interested in hearing the detail of these. What are they and who would pay for them? How would they be accessed? Are there models of best practice?

I ask Mr. Baldwin the same question I put to Ms Hegarty. As practitioners, how would the witnesses describe the relationship between certifiers and building control inspectors? Mr. Baldwin spoke of the high-level study but the difficulty with this is in deciding how far to go. In my constituency there have been two high-profile cases where residents accidentally discovered significant non-compliance with fire safety and building standards in the course of doing renovation works. There would be tens of thousands of units in total across all the similar complexes built in the same area in that era. Does Mr. Baldwin have any more detail on the high-level study?

The big questions surrounding the emergency fund are about who would pay into it and how would one access it. Does Mr. Baldwin have any suggestions or recommendations on those points? I was interested in what he had to say about BCAR. It was said that the new system of privatised statutory self-certification was unique to Ireland, it did not operate in any other country, it reinforced the previous failed system and did not accord with international best practice. The SCSI has some recommendations for reforming the BCAR and the assigned certifier system. Can Mr. Baldwin give a little more detail on that?

The committee is trying to grapple with some issues. For example, what is the best dispute resolution method when defects are found, and what is an effective redress? Who foots the bill and what is the best way of putting in place a system for cases similar to Longboat Quay or Beacon south? The witnesses are professionals in the field, while we are just political representatives, but there have been many hearings and I find it to be very fragmented. I am very confused about how it all operates and I can only imagine how the individual home owner finds it when he or she discovers that there are no safety provisions in the property. How do we make the system more coherent and more easily accessible and understandable to the home owners who find themselves in a defective building and do not know what to do?