Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 8 October 2025
Committee on Infrastructure and National Development Plan Delivery
The Role of Engineering in Delivering High-Quality Infrastructure: Discussion
2:00 am
Mr. Tim Murnane:
It depends on quality. Again, there is the speed of construction and the durability over time. It is down to the performance specification that the design team will prepare, in agreement with the client, in terms of the design life they want from these units. There are apartments that were built in Ireland in the early noughties using modular construction. They were delivered on the back of a trailer and people bolted them together. Those apartments seem to be performing well in service. The mindset of building houses in factories rather than on site is a very positive one. There are great examples internationally, in China and elsewhere, where they do that very successfully. There is better quality and better control over the work and workers go to the same place to work every day, etc. It is certainly not something that I would be saying we should not be doing. It is important from a quality perspective the performance specification is very clear at the start, and the quality is ensured following through on that.
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