Ms Orla Hegarty:

I will first deal with the question on the restrictions imposed on the activities of builders. Our system of building control works on the principle of regulating people in the expectation that the people will quality control the building rather than quality controlling the building and letting people build. When one goes down the route of regulating the building then the State could decide how to do so. It is a national matter for Ireland to decide how to regulate and inspect buildings.

When one goes down the route of regulating the people involved there is a European dimension that comes under the remit of the services directive. The services directive imposes quite strong limitations on allowing member states to restrict both the freedom of movement and the freedom of establishment. There is quite a high bar that one must reach. We have it for electricians, gas installers and crane operators due to the public safety element of their services. The State must demonstrate that it is proportionate and justifiable if it wishes to regulate, which is quite a high bar as found by the European Court of Justice, ECJ.

We already have structures to regulate some construction professionals - the non-craft through SOLAS. I have spoken to SOLAS about how the system operates and I am also familiar with how it works for the professions. If it were to operate for certain building operatives it would first need to cross the bar of demonstrating that it is necessary and there was a public interest and a public safety aspect. It would only be allowed to regulate that aspect. It would need to determine on a European basis the standard of competence to be assessed. It needs to set up structures in order to both assess people and be recognised as a clearing house for equivalence across Europe. The structures to do so are quite complex and onerous. They would need quite a lot of resourcing in order to be open, transparent and even-handed. In any system that is credible there will be certain people who will not meet the standard of competence. The system must be designed around the people who are disappointed when they make an application because they will then need a right of appeal and may go to court. Also, the system needs to be consistent over many years and ensure that everybody is handled in the same way.

Qualifications in construction are very complex. Unlike for a doctor, engineer or an architect there is no national standard agreed across Europe for those professions. It would be a case that Ireland would have to determine what that standard is, demonstrate that it is necessary for public safety reasons, establish the standard and then regulate anybody from Europe who chose to work here through assessing their prior work and qualifications to that standard.

In terms of conflicts of interest, there are inherent conflicts of interest when an organisation performs the two unaligned functions of representing builders or employers and being involved in making representations or lobbing, and also has a consumer focus. If an organisation has to carry out the two functions then at the very least one would expect to see quite a strong Chinese wall down the middle of the organisation. That is not the way that CIRI is structured. CIRI is structured to have a board with some independent members. All of the wraparound to administer that, in terms of the public faith and the person who picks up the phone, it is the same phone number that the consumer must dial to complain about a building as a builder who seeks support from the organisation following a complaint. There no clarity about the purpose. There is plenty of potential risk in terms of how the system would operate.