Ms Orla Hegarty:

I will make one comment. The issues of bonds and latent defects insurance have come up several times. They are both effectively insurance products and they will not be widely available or available at an affordable cost in the Irish market unless the insurance companies can price the risk. The lack of certainty about what risks they are pricing is a disincentive to having affordable insurance, which is the ultimate consumer protection. Having a privatised system in which the construction industry effectively polices itself, which is the system we currently have, is inherently risky and will be viewed as such. In such a system, any products that are available will be either be too expensive to be affordable for most people, be it a bond or a defects insurance policy, or they will not be widely rolled out because people will have to verify what they are insuring.