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

I thank Ms. Neary for her presentation. Our questions to her will be slightly different from those that we put to the other witnesses. A lot of our attention is focused on potential future policy and legislative change, which we are not going to try to pin the Department down on today. That said, I have quite a lot of questions for Ms. Neary.

One of the reasons we are dealing with this issue now is that we have an eye to the building control Bill. Will Ms Neary give us an indication of where that is at, what kinds of issues are being examined and the timescale for the publication of the heads of that Bill or a draft? That would be helpful in terms of our own deliberations in the coming weeks.

Ms Neary will have heard the previous speakers talk about the low levels of inspections by local authorities, the low numbers of staff and the fact that staff were burdened with other responsibilities. In that context, does the Department have figures for the total number of building control staff? Is the Department collecting figures on the numbers of inspections and compliance and enforcement related issues? If such data are being collated, can they be shared with the committee today or at a later stage?

Deputy Casey's point on the rapid builds was a very good one and the answer was quite worrying. Most of us have us have accepted that some of those new technologies have a positive potential in terms of delivery of the units, which is why I would be interested in any reaction Ms Neary has either to Deputy Casey's question or the responses that were given to it.

This is probably an unfair question as the witness will not be able to answer in the way I would like her to. Much debate in the two meetings of this committee on this issue has centred on the contrast between self-certification, even the much more robust system of self-certification now in place, and independent third party inspection and certification, whether it is by local authorities or others. What are the witnesses' thoughts on that issue? What has the Department been considering?

This is another question which the witness probably will not be able to answer but I will ask it anyway. There is much merit in the idea of a building control and compliance authority. Is the Department considering that possibility? Does the witness have any thoughts on it?

At the two committee meetings we have had on this issue, we have either implicitly or explicitly been discussing private residential dwellings which are built to be sold on the private market. We are also very interested in the issue of social housing. While it is well known that some private estates have experienced defects in their constructions, in 1997 the flagship social housing development at Balgaddy in Clondalkin suffered widespread compliance failures which were independently verified and accepted by the local authority. How does the presentation of compliance failures in social housing fit in with the overall presentation given by the witness? A significant part of the Minister's plan involves the use of public private partnerships, joint ventures and the use of Part V agreements. That is another set of relationships between builders and the local authority as the contracting body for the social houses. Where do those types of units fit within SI 9?

I presume that the building control management system, BCMS, module and on-site inspections referred to by Ms Neary are carried out by the assigned certifiers and, if information is then sent to the local authority, inspections are considered at that point. Perhaps the witness could clarify whether that is so and give some more detail on the issue.

Ms Neary said that it is more attractive for insurance. I am not sure that is a good thing. As discussed at a previous committee meeting, the difficulty with defects insurance taken out by a home purchaser is that they have to take out the policy and pay for it. As I said previously, if I go into a record store and buy a CD and find out a couple of weeks later it is broken, I go back to the store and exchange the CD. I do not have to take out an insurance policy to cover me for the selling of a faulty product. I am not against defect insurance. However, in light of the evidence of witnesses that other EU member states cover the cost of setting up some kind of fund or support scheme to cover the cost of defects discovered subsequent to building and the builder bears the liability the rather than the purchaser, is the Department considering adopting that model?