Ms Deirdre Ní Fhloinn:

As the Deputy stated, the Department expressed the view that this is part of a package and one piece of the puzzle which must be considered in context. That package does not seem to involve remedying the problems that were identified. I am not the first person to identify these problems. Having examined the issue in context, I now have the benefit of knowing what happened in the past 40 years. The Law Reform Commission predicted this would be the case and argued that both elements should be advanced. I share its concern that if law reform were enacted tomorrow morning to fix all the problems I have identified, it would not solve the problem of who will pay to fix the defects. The lens through which I examined the Bill is the perspective of the consumer. Who will pay to fix the defects? When someone makes a complaint to this body will anyone come out to look at the defects or pay to fix them?

I want to make another point about the model and also with regard to learning from history. The pyrite panel report of 2012 recommended that there should be a system in place for the registration or licensing of builders and cited the examples of the register of electrical contractors and the register of gas installers - Ms Hegarty referred to these. Both of these registration systems operate under the supervision of an independent State regulatory authority, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities. These bodies were appointed for a seven-year term in 2016 following a public procurement process. As such, there is external oversight monitoring the schemes and what they do. This is a world away from a system where one might have a registration body that is not accountable to anyone. The only real accountability in this Bill and, arguably, the Building Control Act 2007 relating to the other regulated professions, is the requirement to publish an annual report. This is another reason the Freedom of Information Act is very important. If there is no accountability and no external body asking questions, it is down to members of the public to try to work out what is happening via the Freedom of Information Act. This would suggest a real problem of accountability and governance.

The Deputy also referred to models used in other countries. On my previous appearance before the committee, I referred to the licensing model in place in Australia and I would be happy to provide further information on that. The key element of the international systems in place that are regarded as robust and effective are independence at various stages of the construction process. When the World Bank considered what should be the key factors in its guidance for building regulation reform, one of the issues it mentioned was independent verification of design, which is not a feature of our building control regulations of 2014.

There are different elements to this. What I tried to emphasise in my opening statement was that this particular model cannot be viewed in isolation. It is a model that might work differently in another country but in Ireland it is in a highly complex and prejudicial set of existing relationships.