Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Doyle, with respect, the Oireachtas has done a lot of work on that. We must stop doing these things. We must stop having the mica. We must stop having pyrite. We must stop having defective apartment blocks. I know there will be slip-ups here and there, but these are monumental problems. They are absolutely monumental. We are lucky that the State's revenues are very good at the moment. If they were not, we would be up you-know-what creek without a paddle. If we were in a period of austerity here, we would have leaky apartments. There would be crumbling houses in Donegal, Mayo and down as far as Clare. There is pyrite in houses in Offaly, the whole way up to Dublin and back down to Wicklow. We would not be able to do anything about that. We are lucky that the State's finances are fairly good at the moment and that bumper taxation is coming in. That is all good. That is allowing us to get past this, but what we are trying to convey here this morning is that there needs to be a sense of urgency.

I welcome the fact that the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, has had a conversation with the National Building Control Office. It is good that they acted quickly on that. However, I refer to Mr. Doyle as Secretary General and to his senior team who are here this morning. Mr. Doyle's team will have a major role in this, because the officials will do the tick-tacking behind the scenes when we all walk out of here today. This is the public part of it. I ask him to give this a sense of urgency and to come back to us here within two weeks about what is going to be done to beef up the office.

It is unfair and it is not right to rely on the local authority to pull resources out of somewhere within Dublin City Council. I am sure Dublin City Council is firefighting issues such as homelessness, traffic problems and numerous other problems. It is not for me to defend them or speak for them, but this needs to be sorted. We need this building control office. Mr. Doyle mentioned the figure of 100 staff in local authorities. I understand the number of building control officers is closer to 70. Mr. Doyle and I also know that many of them work half-time. They have numerous other roles within the local authority. Is that not correct?