Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Residents of an unfinished housing estate will feel very much that they are the meat in the sandwich where the bond system fails and they have no recourse to get the estate completed. It can delay the estate being taken in charge when it is not completed. It is a significant issue. This is a useful reply. It indicates that there were 20 responses. There are 37 local authorities now. We should look for a complete response since 20 responses is not sufficient, although it is useful to see that it has not occurred in those 20 responses. It was even more useful to see the difficulties that local authorities themselves are facing, such as unnotified expiration of bonds. I have certainly come across that with, for example, the extension of duration of planning permissions.

The only bonds that were ever offered in perpetuity were Anglo Irish Bank bonds bbut they were not worth the paper they were written on and they ended up being at the end of the list of unsecured creditors. That further exposed people where the estate was not completed. Many of the bonds are only offered for seven years. One may be at snag list stage, the estate may not be fully completed, or it may be a large estate. The adequacy of bonds is another matter. These are all issues that have to go back to the Department to make sure that protections are there for people who buy their homes and have an expectation that those systems are robust enough to deal with that.

It is perfectly legitimate for developers to have their bonds partially returned if the estate has been concluded as it was planned. None of us would have an issue with that. For example, difficulties with developers obtaining bonds should be a concern for us because that is an impediment to the compliance for construction and output of new houses. There are a number of issues. The other issue is that it does not differentiate between developers who are compliant or not. Local authorities often look for a cash bond where they had a non-compliant developer. The history of a developer does not seem to translate from one local authority to another. Somebody who had done a terrible job in Kildare could go on to develop an estate in county Cork or Kerry without bringing that history along.

Each local authority is almost a satellite from that point of view. What must be examined from a national point of view is how to have a register that will ensure we get good quality developments and that protections are in place for people. We should ask the Department exactly how it intends to address the issues that the local authorities have identified as shortcomings in this system because we must ensure that it is remedied. It is very useful that it has been brought to our attention.