Ms Deirdre Ní Fhloinn:

I thank Deputy Ó Broin for those questions. I will go through the various points he raised, and if there are ones we think need a little further reflection, we could deal with them in a separate written submission.

I will deal first with the consumer protection element of regulations and building standards that Deputy Ó Broin mentioned and whether we would prefer to see the consumer protection element dealt with first and the register dealt with separately. The Law Reform Commission examined precisely this issue in 1977 in its working paper on liability of vendors and lessors of defective premises. In that paper it deals in detail with the proposed registration system for builders, which was under discussion between the Department with responsibility for the environment at the time and the Construction Industry Federation.

The way in which the Law Reform Commission envisaged the system would work was not dissimilar to the model proposed in the Bill, except it recommended that there should be a requirement for a bond in order to deal with the widespread problem of insolvencies in the construction sector that was perceived at the time. Without dealing with the issue in great detail, the commission suggested the bond could be set at, for example, 1% of the purchase price of the house. I am not suggesting this recommendation be implemented but pointing out that when this model was considered 40 years ago it was considered fundamental that this problem be fixed in addition to fixing the legal problems I identified.

The Law Reform Commission stated it would be useless to create a new set of legal remedies without addressing the fact that the builder may not be solvent and able to meet the claims. Following publication of the Law Reform Commission's working paper, we had the introduction of HomeBond which, to this day, will not give claimants the same amount of money they could recover in an action under contract if they had access to the original contract. HomeBond is more limited and subject to significant exclusions. In each iteration of HomeBond, before it was underwritten by an insurer, it was subject to significant exclusions and limitations on what could be recovered. We have been in this position previously. The Law Reform Commission, in its working paper, stated we should not hold off on introducing these key elements of law reform until the register of builders is in place. Here we are, 40 years later, still looking at the same issue. Having said that, I believe both matters are fundamentally important and both should be progressed as a matter of political urgency.

On the point of the-----