Ms Sarah Neary:

Okay. Let me focus on that for a minute. While they are not required to be independent from the builder or the developer, the only person who can carry out the function of an assigned certifier is a construction professional registered with one of the three statutory registration bodies. They are the only people who can do this work. There are codes of conduct within each of those. There are professional conduct committees. If there is any issue with poor performance, complaints can be made and they can be brought before those committees. That can result in them being taken off the register, which means they can no longer work in that field. While they may not be independent of the teams, their work is governed by a statutory register and we would envisage a similar situation for the builders in the long run through CIRI.

Regarding other jurisdictions, while the UK had a full-approval system by the local authorities, it recently moved towards having independent private sector involvement. It is a slight hybrid. We have recently had visits from Dutch delegations. The Netherlands had a full approval system that was becoming unworkable and it is looking to what we have done to see if it can learn and bring forward its reforms.

Also mentioned this morning was the success of the Health and Safety Authority. Its model very much involves identifying key personnel as part of the building and construction teams to act specifically in the role of health and safety. Similarly, under building control, we are identifying key professionally competent people to take responsibility for ensuring compliance. There are many similarities. In addition there is the audit function of the HSA.

Coming back to the concept of a national watchdog-type body, we would see that being the building control authorities. They all work independently in each local authority, but there is a concept of a shared service offering compliance support, training and identification of when inspections should be carried out, and the BCMS developed to its full potential. Such a shared service led by a lead local authority would provide that sort of centralised and national oversight to ensure consistency and risk-based inspections across the country. It would also have the ability to produce statistics on inspections and enforcements.

An example of that is each local authority is required to have a building register with details of each commencement notice at local authority level. The BCMS allows that to be brought at a national level into one building register, which is much more informative and easily accessible for everyone. That is being developed into a more searchable format at the moment and will be available in the coming weeks. In the fullness of time we would like to see enforcements recorded on that. The shared service should be able to give a greater insight into the level of inspections that are happening across local authorities.

Another subject that came up was the rapid-build or modern methods of construction. We were involved in developing the Office of Government Procurement framework last year which requires that these forms of construction have a six-year durability and fully comply with building regulations. The innovation here is that they are built off site or are prefabricated before coming to site. Third-party certification is required for that. Some third party must analyse the system to ensure it complies with all parts of the building regulations. That is the document assigned certifiers would use as a basis for inspecting what happens in the factory and then what happens on site with assembly. All of the details should be covered in that. We have been involved in this process on a number of social housing projects. The assigned certifiers have certainly been very clear about their role in inspecting at the factory, as well as on site. We have seen some very successful outcomes of it. The Irish Building Control Institute held its national conference last month at which a building control officer gave a very good account of engaging with a site that had a modern method of construction. He liaised closely with the manufacturer, which provided the third-party certification. He was in a position to get from the factory records of when these were built. It came to a very successful outcome. He was satisfied that it had carried out due diligence in terms of compliance. It is certainly on the radar. That presentation was given to all building control officers to inform them of the process.

On social housing, another aspect of SI 9 that I did not cover was that the building control exemption previously available to local authorities was removed through SI 9. All social housing must go through the SI 9 process or the BCAR process. So there is no difference-----