Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister of State may or may not be aware, the idea of a statutory register is older than he is. It started its life in a Law Reform Commission report recommending its creation in the 1970s. The proposition was strongly resisted by the Construction Industry Federation, CIF, and not only by its equivalent at the time but also by architects, engineers and chartered surveyors. It died a slow death between the 1970s and 1980s and was revived only by the Minister of State's party colleague the then Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Phil Hogan, when he produced his building control reform proposals after the Priory Hall issue arose. It is an important proposal that would place all construction industry professionals on a statutory register and having a set of requirements to be able to trade and be a professional. Having a formal complaints procedure for where people have been deemed to be in breach of the code and those criteria is important.

Two issues that relate to the amendments before us are very important. There are many areas of construction where formalised skills are still not where most people in the industry would like them to be. In the case of plastering, for example, there is a fairly mobile labour force from a variety of countries. In many cases, on a building site where people come onto the site for work, they will not have to show a formal qualification but rather just demonstrate they can carry out the relevant plastering work and that may or may not suffice for the foreman or the contractor. The difficulty, of course, is that creates the possibility for inadequate standards and workmanship. I strongly agree with Deputy Cian O'Callaghan that the point is not to create a regime from the start that locks out people but instead is about moving towards circumstances in which there is a clear skills register in order that, when the registration body, which we will come to in the next amendment, is trying to determine whether the person is a qualified skilled professional to carry out that work, there will be a proper, statutory register against which those skills can be marked.

The other example that is important to mention relates to fire stopping. The Minister of State will be aware from his knowledge of Celtic tiger-era building defects, particularly in apartments and duplexes, that fire stopping is one of the most common defects. Currently, there is no skills requirement to place fire stopping in properties. There is no course that has to be completed or qualification that has to be achieved, and that is one of the reasons, although not the only one, that fire stopping continues to blight the lives of thousands of homeowners and tenants in properties that were built without adequate fire stopping.

Deputy O'Callaghan's amendment is eminently sensible and it will probably be easier for the Minister of State to support his amendment or a version thereof than it will be to support mine, given mine seeks to insert in the Bill a requirement for a statutory skills register. Even if he will not accept either amendment, this is something that makes eminent sense. I suspect both industry and the unions think it is a good idea and, therefore, I am keen to hear his response. Without such a register complementing the construction industry register, the Bill will be much weaker. Accordingly, I strongly support both my amendment and that of Deputy O'Callaghan.