Mr. John Garrett:

The Regulation, Risk and Conveyancing in Irish Defective Concrete study carried out by Petrolab concludes there is now a necessity to formulate a long-term testing regime for properties not currently displaying damage which are to be bought and sold in the conveyancing market and which were themselves constructed between 1990 and 2020. The testing regime used for the conveyancing market needs to provide certainty to buyers and lenders that their purchase is safe and give homeowners more clarity on how they can sell or, if necessary, remediate their property. The testing regime needs to account for the fact that almost one third of properties tested so far have been built from more than one concrete type. Where variations occur, they are often between inner leaf, outer leaf and below the DPC.

As well as this there should be more training for those providing the service of prepurchase property inspection reports so they are able to consider circumstantial evidence, recognise the pattern of cracking associated with concrete blocks containing excessive deleterious material, and be aware that small cracks can signal the early stages of damage.

This week, from today until 17 May, an international conference on iron sulphide reactions in concrete is taking place in Université Laval in Quebec City, Canada. I am aware that Petrolab will be making three presentations at it. These are on pyrite and pyrrhotite in concrete blocks and petrographic observations from south-west England and north-west Ireland; framboidal pyrite in concrete block and reassessing EN 12620 in light of the degradation observed across the Republic of Ireland; and high-risk architectural concrete masonry units in County Donegal and insights from the mass IS 465 dataset macroscopic quantification of pyrrhotite risk and the petrographic atlas. There will be an awful lot of information at this conference. I am sure there will be several other contributors to it. Perhaps it will add to the education of all parties.