Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The interesting thing is that if we go back far enough, in this city, nearly everything was built out of wood. That was stopped because of the reasons relating to fire. Much more recently, there were, unfortunately, some high-profile cases, maybe built around 15 years ago or a little bit longer, which had issues with how they were built and the fire separations not being put in properly. That obviously gives rise to people having concerns because, in relatively recent history, our track record of timber frame construction in certain areas and the building regulations and inspections was actually quite poor. We are lucky that, in a number of instances, the fires broke out in the daytime when no one was asleep, so the smoke spread in developments and apartments in multiple areas did not end up with fatalities in most instances. I think it ended up with fatalities in one instance. Given those developments were from about 15 years ago, has any analysis been done of timber frame construction since then to show there have not been issues since the problems with the builds in 2004 and 2005? Since then, have we managed to do these correctly with regard to building regulations and so on? If we have, that might give more confidence to the area.