Mr. Cormac Bradley:

An interesting statistic came up yesterday when I was giving a presentation on building control (amendment) regulations, BCAR. Up to this point in 2017, approximately 6,000 commencing notices have been logged onto the building control management system, BCMS. That number is made up of 6,000 building projects of varying sizes. It could be a ten-storey office block or a 41 sq. m extension to an existing residential dwelling. Of those 6,000 or so commencing notices, however, 4,700 came with an opt-out provision. That means 4,700 projects where the building owner said that he or she did not need to comply with statutory compliance. The facility to opt out came about as part of a review that none of us supported. We have to be very careful about saying we want to police the professionals to the benefit of the layperson when, under the current system, the layperson is actually endeavouring to run away from it as quickly as he or she can. We have to be cognisant of that.

If someone were to ring Ms Spillane and say he or she wanted to initiate a building project and needed a chartered engineer to take on the role of assigned certifier, Ms Spillane would point them to our register of 7,000 people. First, it is impractical to ask which one of those 7,000 would she recommend. Second, even if she did have the temerity to recommend one individual in particular, the other 6,999 would then question her relationship with the person she had just recommended. We need to be careful of seeing a register as a panacea. One of the commonest expressions we use in the professional classes is "due diligence". We are expected to conduct our own research. Sometimes we get paid for it, because it is the preamble to an appointment, and sometimes we simply want to find something out. We can carry this research out colloquially, for example, by asking a person who hired her whether the house built by Ms Spillane was any good and whether she could be relied upon. We again need to be careful here.

A self-builder is, by definition, only interested in one person, numero uno. As soon as the builder becomes involved in a second project, he or she is no longer necessarily a self-builder. The Construction Industry Federation, CIF, has pointed out, very fairly, that a mainstream contractor is expected to be on the Construction Industry Register Ireland, CIRI, and commit to insurance, latent defects insurance and continuing professional development etc., but the self-builder does not necessarily commit to those. I have the same example. I am trying to do assigned certifier work where I am, to a certain extent, limited by the fee my company wants to recover for me doing that. The individual operating as an assigned certifier in the front room of his home does not have my corporate overheads. We need to be careful we are not generating a race to the bottom, and this is a mechanism that will stop a race to the bottom by introducing a mandatory element. One of the mandatory elements of this proposal is that the expertise of individuals and corporate entities trying to get on the register must stand up to scrutiny. If a contractor states he or she can build a six-storey building but has never done it, there would be a default. The Bill proposes a sanctioning mechanism in this regard. I will go back to what I have said. CIRI is not a panacea for everything and it must be operated in conjunction with the building control (amendment) regulations and appropriate due diligence.