Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 7 November 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Latent Defects: Discussion

Mr. Matt Cleary:

Deputy Casey is 100% right. There needs to be an independent authority governing building control, the equivalent of an independent clerk of works that inspects all sorts of construction. We have found that, with all the defects that are passed, a fire safety certificate that is issued through opinion of compliance through the relevant architects' consultants at the end of a build is based on the design drawings, not on the building. Everything that is built should be inspected at certain points and signed off by an independent authority. We would also like to see developers’ bonds being retained and used in the future. There could be a recall system for returning those bonds to the development companies, the OMCs, for costing or supporting builders' defects in the future. We feel quite strongly about that.

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