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

Real life cases. There are both life and live cases, which are serious. There is a well-known residential developer in the Dublin region, who, in 2017 acquired a former Ben Dunne gym on the Coldcut Road in north Clondalkin. Despite having planning permission to retrofit it into approximately 30 apartments, the developer proceeded to retrofit into 48 apartments, without any planning permission. Not a single certificate for the building control amendment regulations system was submitted and no commencement, disability, fire or completion certificate was submitted. The building is fully occupied and he is appealing a planning refusal to the board. Approximately half of the residents have come from homeless services while the other half are a mixture of tenants on the HAP scheme and tenants paying full rent, which is very hefty. The board refused him his permission and he has been engaged in a protracted and strategic process with the council. The net effect is that we are here now in 2024 and that building is fully occupied. It is in breach of the building control amendment regulations on multiple counts and it still does not have planning permission.

Thankfully it is not a firetrap. South Dublin County Council rightly checked that. However, it is probably the most egregious breach not just of planning but of the 2014 Building Control (Amendment) Regulations. A couple of years later, the same company sought planning permission for a larger new-build apartment development in Dublin city. That building was completed a year ago and is lying empty because Dublin City Council's building control section and DCC are involved in protracted legal action against the developer for breaches of planning and building control.

In Clondalkin, the village where I live, the same developer acquired planning permission and is building out an apartment block which has been left vacant and undeveloped for a year, just the core concrete structure and windows going up. The question everybody asks is how it is possible that somebody who engaged in such a flagrant breach both of planning and the Building Control (Amendment) Regulations in Larkfield House in Clondalkin is able to continue to proceed in this manner. The reason is partly because the law itself is far too weak and the burden of proof on the local authority is far too onerous. Also, our local authority building control sections, with maybe the one exception of Dublin city, simply do not have the resources to inspect, enforce and impose some of the sanctions, albeit limited, that do exist.

That is only one developer. I could take you to another development in my constituency where very expensive new homes bought by hard-working families were acquired in an estate where the developer did not complete all of the externals. In fairness to the architect involved, they were in full compliance with the Building Control (Amendment) Regulations 2014 but the areas not covered by BCAR, such as the roads, streetlights, access roads and so on were never complete. It is now outside the planning permission. I understand the builder-developer is being pursued in the courts by Uisce Éireann and possibly the council for problems arising from road opening, water connections and so on. My understanding is that the person is still involved in the construction of other developments, or certainly was until some time ago.

This section of the Bill is enormously important. It is not instead of or to replace planning enforcement or building control enforcement but it is an important tool. While I do want to come back on some other aspects of the section after we deal with this amendment, I just think we have to start getting tough with people. I appreciate there might be a case involving some very minor breaches where one might not necessarily want a complete blanket rule, but right now, decades after Celtic tiger planning and building control irregularities, we still have a system that is not fit for purpose. Today, despite the changes that were made in 2014, we have, for example, in Dublin city and Dublin county, a very large number of residential units being built in clear breach of planning rules and the developer can just go and get another planning permission and repeat the same thing again. For me it just beggars belief so I am very interested to hear the Minister of State's response to this amendment. When we dispense with the amendment, I want to raise some other questions with respect to this section.