Maria Bailey (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

For people watching the proceedings, the CIRI is the construction industry register of Ireland, an online register of competent builders. Deputy Casey talked about the shortage of skills. At the height of the boom, one in eight worked in the construction industry. Can Ms Hegarty tell us what the figure is now? We lost a lot of very skilled people during the downturn and this particularly affected local authorities, where people took early retirement. The three members of this committee who are present were probably members of local authorities at the time and our planning departments, in particular, saw a decrease in staffing because of the fact that larger applications were not coming in. It takes a long time to build that back up but we have been given assurances that the funding has been put in place and local authority staffing is being ramped up in that area, as well as in An Bord Pleanála, something that was touched on by Ms Hegarty.

Does she see that as an ongoing problem or are people starting to take up construction studies, town planning and such academic subjects again?

Ms Fallon or Mr. Baldwin touched on the issue of commencement notices. I like their idea about the layout of a plan on a commencement notice but that might not be suitable for a one-off house or an application under 20 units. Is that for larger developments to ensure there is natural monitoring of them so that it can be seen if the scheme is changed in terms of access into the site or whatever?

Many figures were given on the difference in cost in terms of all the standards and regulations that have been brought forward. The Construction Industry Federation, CIF, says it is 2% and we also have the other extreme. For clarification, what is the impact of all these standards on the cost? We have to separate that from the standards we should have versus the cost of compliance. It is about going on site and inspecting the developments but how do we choose in that regard? Do we go with the larger scale developments because the witnesses cannot cover everybody? Are larger scale developments the sites we have to monitor very closely or the one-off house in somebody's garden? Where they prioritise will be different throughout the country.

While we have a register for people in the construction industry I like the idea of a planning register. I had a couple of other questions and when they are answered I might ask some supplementary questions on that. Deputy Casey asked two of mine; one would think I had been talking to him before the meeting. I will go back to Ms Hegarty first.