Ms Deirdre Ní Fhloinn:

The Senator asked four questions. We will divide the answers between us. A point was made about consumer protection and redress and another was made about building control authorities and why enforcement by such authorities is perceived to have failed. Senator Boyhan raised a question about who would control the system and run it efficiently, which Ms Hegarty will deal with, and I was asked to deal with a question about freedom of information and the Ethics in Public Office Act 1995.

I am happy to deal with the first point in respect of inadequate consumer protection and redress. This is along the lines of what I addressed the committee about when I was before it in April. There are a number of significant legal hurdles for ordinary homeowners. They also affect commercial individuals, but I will particularly address the example of someone who owns his or her home and who has either bought it from new or had works carried out on it. If there are defects in that home, the remedies available to that person are very poor. They are very poor at common law under the law of contract if the person in question is not the first buyer.

When I spoke to the committee on the last occasion I also raised the fact that our systems of dispute resolution, arbitration and litigation are very lengthy, time consuming and expensive. It is very difficult for consumers to navigate. Senator Boyhan has returned. I am dealing with his first point about inadequate consumer protection and redress. I have looked at a number of cases before the Irish courts in which it has been very apparent that consumers have spent years trying to pursue remedies against multiple defendants at considerable cost to themselves. Waiting to see if they can get a remedy and for somebody to fix significant problems with their homes can cause considerable personal stress. I am not the first person to call for law reform. I mapped out the law reforms which I believe should be undertaken in the area of legal remedies in the submission which I made to the committee in April. In my view, we need to introduce primary legislation to deal with the problem of remedy in contract not being available to subsequent purchasers.

I wrote "revisit that" but I also made various points at the time about a consumer friendly system of dispute resolution.

On the point made about the freedom of information, ethics in public office and conflicts of interest, other Irish State bodies are subject to a fairly wide number of different types of regulation in terms of their behaviour, financial interest and regulation of lobbying. One can peruse the websites and annual reports of other public bodies, such as the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, and find out the financial interests of the various members of the committees and boards who are involved in those bodies. That is part of the accountability model that is used for those types of bodies that have a very important regulatory role. A body that has the power to regulate a sector and say which people can work in it and under what conditions must be subject to very rigorous standards of accountability. If there is a means to find out whether a person had a financial interest in a matter that is a very serious matter. That is why we regulate, under the Ethics in Public Office Act, for disclosures of interest that must be made by people in certain positions of employment or by certain public bodies.

The Freedom of Information Act is another example. The reason that I know that the formal enforcement powers of the Building Control Acts are very seldom used is based on the fairly scant information available on that aspect in the annual reports produced by local authorities. When I submitted freedom of information requests to local authorities that is when I made the discovery. I succeeded because I specifically said, "May I have a copy of the register for the last five years of the number of enforcement notices issued under the Building Control Acts and the number of convictions that have been secured?" This matter is of fundamental importance for this Bill because of one of the matters that an applicant must demonstrate when he or she submits an application to the CIRI board. He or she must declare that he or she has no convictions under the Building Control Acts. When one cross-refers the matter to the exercise of those powers by building control authorities we find that the formal enforcement powers are virtually never used. Out of all of the building control authorities that I spoke to or contacted I did not find a single one to confirm that there had been an any convictions under the Act in the last five years. Many of them have not issued a single enforcement notice under the Acts. Senator Boyhan was right to ask whether this aspect tells us our building control system is fit for purpose. I am not in any sense criticising building control authorities. I simply wish to make the point that this is part of the really essential context that we must consider when examining the effect of this Bill. In my view this aspect raises questions about resourcing and support for the work of building control authorities, which again is a point I made when I addressed the committee in April. I will now hand over to Ms Hegarty.