Mr. John O'Connor:

To start with the issue of one-off houses, the building control regulations are the ones that affect the inspection and certification of buildings. The purpose of making amendments to the building control regulations was to ensure better building standards by ensuring people were preparing decent plans when building a house or other buildings, and that there would be inspections during construction and certification at the end. The purpose of the regulations was to improve building standards. It is acknowledged that it may be an undue burden for people building one-off houses and the Minister is looking at that in terms of making the process less costly and more effective for one-off house owners building their own houses.