Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair and thank the witnesses for coming in. I am a building contractor and have been all my life. I am a block layer by trade so who can better talk about this? I am not talking to a desktop. The desktop study that was done on this is ludicrous. How do you see something and explain something to somebody if you can do it yourself, which I can do.

At the last committee meeting I was at, before I got sick that time, we asked for the foundations to be included. Why? Because the new housing building regulations mean that walls are wider, insulation is wider within the household, and the roof timbers under the new regulations are heavier so they are going from 4 in. x 2 in. to 6 in. x 2 in. or 7 in. x 2 in. Roof loads and everything will be bigger on a foundation and the old foundations were based on being approximately what was called at that time 18 in. wide and 18 in. depth. They are now 900 mm wide, which is 36 in. wide and they go with the 350 mm depth. That is because they were spreading the weight load. Anyone who comes up with a desktop study and says a new house can be built on top of an old foundation should not be doing that desktop study in the first place. They should ask people who know what they are doing. How to better ask people who know what they are doing is to ask a contractor. We have been looking at people who are on the National Standards Authority of Ireland, NSAI, and have been talking about people who are on the group. As a contractor, and I am still a contractor, I get a weekly update on price increases. From the same people who are on that group I have got three increases in the last eight months and they are after getting a 5% levy on every block and concrete product that goes into a house. Now they have hit us with 30% increase in our products, which are being used to build houses for the people who have been affected. They are sitting on the board of the group. If people are asking if they have a conflict of interest, is that not the biggest conflict of interest someone can have?

The Government is standing idly by and watching this. The Government is taking advice from people who know nothing about building. People then got their houses insulated, with pumped insulation, and I asked - and it is on the record - for any house that was to be insulated with pumped insulation for it to be tested first. If there was no pyrite or mica they then can be pumped with insulation because if they have it, there will be a problem within two to three years. The same problems with houses will show up again. Did the Government do it? No. It did not listen. Why has the Government not listened to people who know what they are talking about? I thank my colleagues to my left who have been working very hard on this and we have worked together on this. Why? Because they value the information that somebody can give them because they know what they are talking about. They are not talking to a desktop but to someone who has experience of this.

Why does the Government not listen to people who have experience in and who are qualified in the field of construction? It is because they look at a computer and say that if it is written down, it has to be true but it is not practical. This goes back to what I keep saying: common sense is not that common when it comes to policy-making because people who are making policies do not understand the practicalities of it. People are coming back to us again pleading that the systems are wrong but they are still not listening. Why not make the people who make this accountable? We should ask one of them to go out and build one of these houses or find storage for a house at a time when there is a housing crisis.

The previous speaker got two additional minutes. People have been allowed to speak. If the Chair is being flexible with everybody, I would like him to be flexible with a person who actually knows what he is talking about.