Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the briefing. I have been involved in construction all my life and I am still a contractor. I welcome this engagement. I have listened to many Deputies speak on this issue and to the witnesses' briefing. They hit the nail on the head when they spoke about the way certain buildings were built using a main contractor and many subcontractors who carried out works. With respect to the oversight of fire-stopping, different contractors were involved. They may have drilled a hole 45 mm in diameter, which is too big as it is only supposed to be 40 mm for fire-breaking. Pipework may have been installed without fire stops around it. I welcome that this issue is being highlighted.

The witnesses mentioned Dublin and Cork but homes in Limerick are also affected. I received a phone call yesterday from a man who bought an apartment three years ago in a building that was built 20 years ago. When he discovered there was an issue he did not know where to go. Underneath his apartment is a seven-storey car park. We can only imagine what would happen to the apartment above if a car were to go on fire in the car park.

He came back from working abroad to buy this apartment and felt he was set up for life only to find out that he is in a seven storey apartment block over a car park and he has this huge bill. He cannot sleep at night. There has been a failure with regard to these type of developments, most of which happened during the Celtic tiger times when they were not properly supervised.

I am a contractor and most of my business is one-off houses but I have been involved in the industrial side also where fire-proofing is done and there are different ratings between detached and semi-detached houses. The biggest problem I find when people come to me for advice, help and my experience on issues they have with other buildings is the lack of what I would call a one-stop-shop. There is a phrase, "doctors differ and patients die". We need a dedicated engineering service that people can avail of that will deal with pyrite and fireproofing issues. They should have a list of services that they can avail of rather than ringing around everywhere to try to find out who will give them the best advice possible. Somebody should be able to provide such a service in, say, Limerick, Cork or Dublin. We need somebody who understands those people's problems and can send out a task force to the particular areas to examine those problems. That is the only way to deal with this issue. I deal with engineers on a daily basis. I could be dealing with 20 different engineers and every engineer is slightly different in terms of their thoughts. We need a task force that will deal with these issues and give answers directly to people, perhaps through a help line that they can ring about a specific issue and get a costing. If such a task force had all the collective experience and all the studies available to it, it would then be able to give somebody a definite answer, probably at a lower cost than somebody directly involved in that area. I welcome this and I will give 100% support to it but we need a special task force to deal with this issue county by county where people can ring a phone line. I have a list of names and I will be the first person to ring a task force to find out who can help. I can at least hand on the details to somebody and give them that experience. I am willing to learn also.