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

I move amendment No. 3:

In page 10, to delete lines 12 and 13 and substitute the following: “(4) The Minister shall appoint the National Building Control Office as the registration body under subsection(2):”

These amendments probably relate to one of the most significant aspects of this Bill and probably one of the most significant disagreements between some of us in the Opposition and the Government. Section 8 is quite a bizarre section in the sense that it sets down the criteria that an organisation may meet to be designated as a registration body. We all know who the registration body will be because that has already been decided and is a matter of public record. The Construction Industry Federation, CIF, has the non-statutory register. At first take, it is almost like rather than just saying we are giving it to the CIF, we set down in law a set of criteria the CIF can meet and only an organisation such as it can meet, which strikes me as odd.

However, that is not the central problem here. The CIF is not the right place for this register. Any of us who have lived through or who have worked with families affected by defective buildings know that in particular for that industry, the very last place to put a register of this kind is within the lobby organisation for those same organisations and individual contractors that this register will cover.

There is a long-standing tradition here, in Britain and elsewhere that we have these almost Victorian gentlemen's self-regulatory bodies. We have it with architects, surveyors, engineers, etc. That is a fundamentally flawed model and one can see that, for example, when one looks at the level of complaints and sanctions against members registered in some of those bodies but particularly with construction and particularly because one of the great values of a statutory register is that it will give the public confidence that we should not have a return to the same levels of defective workpersonship as we have in the past. Locating this in the lobby organisation, albeit with some Chinese walls and some issues around governance and the board, makes no sense to me.

It is also very hard to understand given that the Minister of State's predecessor created a body which is much better suited to be the location of this, which is the National Building Control Office, NBCO. For those members of the committee who do not know its good work, it was set up specifically to try to support, enhance and improve building control functions in local authorities. If one were to take a longer-term view, the NBCO authority is exactly the kind of body that one would progressively build into a much larger and more effective building control and consumer protection agency, not unlike the Food Safety Authority, the Environmental Protection Agency, etc.

Therefore, my amendment, inelegant as it is, and I am sure the Minister of State will tell me all about the technical inadequacies of my drafting, and that is okay, is more to make a crucial point here, which is this should not be located in the CIF. That is not disrespect to the good people of the CIF. Its job is to represent, lobby for and advocate on behalf of its members. However, if we want the public to have absolute confidence that this register is fully independent of industry and that it would be administered without fear or favour, then the right place is the NBCO. That will place challenges, as the NBCO only has a small number of staff and has only been recently established. However, given that it exists, I see no reason that this function would not be given to it and that is why I am pressing this amendment.