Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 28 June 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Inflationary Costs in the Construction Industry: Discussion

Photo of Steven MatthewsSteven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I want Ms Hegarty to come back to that point because it is important. For the sake of fairness, I need to keep to the time slots for people. We were up to 12 and a half minutes on that slot but there were some interesting points in it. The next slot is a Green slot and I will take that.

I am sorry I did not get a chance at the start to put the meetings in context. This is the second meeting we have had on construction costs. The first meeting we had was purely on construction costs. In the second meeting, we want to look at the impact of inflation on construction costs. We hope to publish a report on that. Ms Donaghy stated there are areas that she probably thought we might not get into today but I assure her we are open to these suggestions and any of the research that Ms Donaghy has done, or any credible suggestions at all. We are willing to ask for consideration of those and I ask her to not feel constrained in any way to discuss any part of affordability in construction today. It is key at the end of the day, if we manage to produce 33,000 houses or 40,000 houses per year, or whatever it is, that they are affordable for people. That is the critical point.

I will ask a question on refurbishment, over the shop accommodation and bringing derelict properties, either formerly residential or formerly commercial buildings, back into use. The Peter McVerry Trust is doing quite a lot of work in this area. We had a committee report published and it was suggested that there were costs with refurbishment of the second and third storeys of commercial buildings that were making it prohibitive in many cases because there were a number of different stages that one had to go through with accessibility certificates or where it might require a conservation architect, etc. What is Mr. Doyle's experience of it in the Peter McVerry Trust?

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.