Ms Deirdre Ní Fhloinn:

In terms of national review of building control, this information is already being fed into a national system. To come back to my example of the Food Safety Authority, it works as a regulatory superstructure that monitors and supervises enforcement activities and inspections by lots of local inspectors. It could work with our current system of building control. That regulatory superstructure brings a consistency of inspection protocols and reporting of enforcement activity. I went onto the Food Safety Authority website today and I found out the number of closure orders that were made for restaurants in February of this year and the total number of enforcement that were made last year. I went onto the Commission for Communications Regulation, ComReg, website and I found out about a non-compliance notice that was served on Three in the last few weeks.

It is impossible to find that information publicly with regard to building control enforcement. This relates to the question about the public perception of building control. I went to the launch of a county council annual report today, and the report did not contain the term "building control". I was shocked by that. People need to understand what building control means. It needs to have that public profile because that is partly how we will educate people about the value of building control.

On a related point of local authority versus assigned certifier building control, we have set up this architecture now in the building control (amendment) regulations where we have a parallel private and public system but the public system is essential. I become concerned when I hear statements being made to the effect that building regulations compliance is a matter for owners and their teams. It is also a matter for monitoring and enforcement, and the State needs to be in this space. The Deputy asked what people do when they find defects. I spoke at a conference in London last year and I said that when someone in Ireland has a defect and they find out how bad their legal position is, they ring a disc jockey called Joe Duffy. That is partly how we solve some of our governance problems in Ireland. That is unacceptable. People's lives have been destroyed, and we need to consider coming up with proper regulation.

The new homes ombudsman recommendation in the English parliamentary group is one that should be considered. We need to have an accessible dispute resolution process. Coming back to the Food Safety Authority, thousands of calls about food safety are made to its help line every year. The Irish Government has not even set up a helpline for people with defects in their homes, not to mention a regulator.

On the point about building control, public and private building control have different objectives. If I am an assigned certifier on a major project I have a very different set of objectives and duties from the local authority building inspector. They work side by side, and I know from speaking to assigned certifiers that their roles can complement each other, but we have to recognise that the public role is still essential.