Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I assume the former Minister will have to answer questions as well as Deputy McHugh because the latter has come into office just in the past month or so.

Everyone knows the really difficult situation in which the principals in Tyrrelstown have been landed. I have huge sympathy for them. Everyone wants to get this resolved. We held a meeting about the matter last week, to which I thought no one would come because they felt it was being addressed, but about 80 parents came. People's overriding feeling was one of fear of sending their five and six year old kids back into the ground floor of the school because, not surprisingly, they have a complete lack of trust, having been told this was all okay. What safety measures are in place that are different from those in place when the Department shut down the school two weeks ago? Will the Department call the Garda and ask it to investigate this? Will there be a criminal investigation? Surely it is a crime to build shoddy buildings, notwithstanding the absolute joke that is the planning laws we have in this country, given the craven connection and relationship between certain political parties and developers. It must still be a crime to build a building without putting in wall ties. I was making a point about how cheap they are. Presumably, what happens is that one is under pressure, has, say, ten workers on a job when there should be 20 and therefore, instead of putting in the wall ties in each section, puts them in perhaps only in every third section. This is presumably the kind of pressure that builds up in companies like these, that is, bottom feeder companies. We will say nothing today of the revenue of which the State has been deprived because of the consistent policy of the Department of Education and Skills of employing usually Northern Ireland-based companies that come in, bring in their workers, who are forced into positions of bogus self-employment, in vans and drive them back home. This has happened with loads of other companies, not just this one. We have raised it tonnes of times here and now we are seeing the safety implications of such an operation.

I want to ask specifically about Western Building Systems. If the fire safety issues in Rush and Lusk were discovered in October 2015, why did Western Building Systems continue a month later to build the rapid-build houses in Poppintree? In 2017 it was building schools in Firhouse. Is it still building schools now, by the way? I am sure the Department has stopped all that in light of what has happened, but why did the Government not take action at the point at which fire safety issues were discovered? Could it not have investigated all the schools three years ago, rather than in October 2018, when the first signs of problems were showing?

Lastly, I was talking to a building worker who told me he and other building workers have been trying to blow the lid and be whistleblowers on these bogus self-employment building contractors for a good few years now because they have worked in those companies and see how they operate. There has been no interest in this in the Parliament, but these workers went to a meeting in the offices of the Department of Education and Skills and raised all these issues in Western Building Systems and they were literally turfed out the door. I can get the dates of those meetings, but is the Minister aware of this? Can he look back in the diaries in Tullamore and see if this was the case? If it is the case, that should also be part of the investigation that takes place.