Mr. Cormac Bradley:

Potentially, but I suggest that is still accessible to them. The register is currently available to small and medium-sized subcontractor specialists in a voluntary capacity.

As to whether the voluntary register has had an impact, I would say there is an awareness rather than an influence. I am about to embark on a project in the pharmaceutical sector. I had a meeting with the client a number of weeks ago and he said to me at a very early stage of our engagement – basically 15 minutes into my first face-to-face conversation with him – that he was considering three contractors and he asked me which one I would use.

I said I could not answer that question. He said he did not care whether I thought I could answer the question and that he wanted an answer, so there is an awareness of this. I was able to say that one of the defining measures he might consider is whether any of the three contractors he was considering was on the CIRI register. He asked about the significance of that. I said the significance of it is that if they are on the register, they are making a public declaration of their capabilities so, effectively, if they default regarding the work they are doing, the public declaration catches them out.

How much more effective will a mandatory register be, with the ultimate sanction that if one is proven to be incompetent on the basis of track record, one will lose one's livelihood, there is no recourse and one is gone? One of the problems we in the construction sector have is that we are collectively tarnished by what happened in the past. There are many people out there trying to do the right thing and many people governed by a code of ethics but, regrettably, we have been tarnished by the actions of a small percentage of the sector and, increasingly, developers who are looking at a commercial return, not necessarily at building standards.

We must also realise that the CIRI register is not the panacea to resolve all the difficulties in the sector. The CIRI register is part - a very substantial part, admittedly - of a suite of tools to which the building sector is voluntarily committing itself by virtue of the initiative put in place by the former Minister, Mr. Hogan, whereby we look at additional certification and we have an assigned certifier and a design certifier. Ten years ago, those positions did not exist. We have ancillary certification. That did not exist either. On a certificate of compliance and completion, a builder is expected to declare that he or she has constructed the works in accordance with the drawings, specifications and performance parameters he or she was given. If someone claims to have firestopped a building and it is proved afterwards that he or she did not do so appropriately, he or she has sullied - not just sullied, but reneged on - the declaration he or she made in that certification.

With respect to Deputy Ó Broin's question as to where individuals should go if they come across something that is wrong with a house, for example, the reality is that they now have an assigned certifier who is a named individual, a design certifier who is a named individual and a building owner, who in this case may be a developer and who is a named individual. Suddenly there are three named individuals whereas, previously, as the Deputy correctly said, the finger was pointed at the subcontractor, who said it was not his or her fault but someone else's because that someone else told the subcontractor what he or she was doing was right. What BCAR has endeavoured to do is eliminate the ring-around because if we say we want an ancillary certificate for the fire design of a building, we can trace that fire certificate from a corporate, although not an individual, point of view. If, for example, one is of the view that the fire measures in one's house are not adequate, one can seek out, presumably via a freedom of information request, information as to who signed the certificate that says the fire measures were appropriately installed and one now has a name. One can say, "Hold on. You have made a declaration to the effect that the fire measures are appropriate. They are clearly not. What happened?" We must not look to the CIRI register as a panacea to resolve all the problems. CIRI must operate in tandem with BCAR and the ancillary certification.

Reference to LDI and to professional indemnity insurance, PII, is conspicuously absent from our written statement. Mr. Baldwin is one of the few people who have been involved in this process from the word "go" in the dark days of 2012. LDI was always on the agenda. My colleagues to my right were the proponents of LDI, but at the time it was considered that it required ministerial intervention to get it off the ground. That has not happened for understandable reasons. PII likewise. It is almost inconceivable that contractors who are responsible for the biggest element of a project can get away without having PII. However, PII, LDI, CIRI and BCAR are not stand-alones; they all integrate and overlap. If we walk away from this Bill saying that we have done our business and that CIRI solves all the problems, we will be neglecting our duties. The former Minister, Mr. Hogan, and his officials at the time said BCAR would be subject to milestone reviews. Deputy Alan Kelly initiated the first one; there will be others in future. Likewise with this Bill. We can say we will get it in place and make the register mandatory but we must ensure we do not say that is it, it is on the shelf and it is mandatory. It must be subject to ongoing review.