Mr. Peter Hynes:

Ba mhaith liom ar dtús fáilte a chur roimh an coiste agus mo buíochas a ghabháil as ucht an cuireadh a bheith libh.

I thank the Chairman and members for the opportunity to address the committee. I am accompanied by my colleague from the land use and transport committee of the County and City Management Association, CCMA. Mr. Richard Shakespeare, who is seated on my left, is the assistant chief executive of Dublin City Council. We are also accompanied by Mr. Seamus Murphy, chief fire officer with Mayo County Council, and Mr. Pat Nestor, senior building surveyor with Dublin City Council.

I wish to confirm that the return of currently vacant or under-utilised upper floors to residential use is a high priority for the CCMA. We strongly support any initiative which will assist in the regeneration of urban areas and, in particular, our small towns and villages. That said, we have concerns regarding the current proposal that I would like to share with the committee.

The objective of this Bill appears to be the smoothing of procedures currently in place to support the provision of residential accommodation. The main procedural requirements that the Bill proposes to replace with a single, one-stop-shop process are: planning consent; fire safety certificates; disability access certificates; commencement notices; and certificates of compliance.

Local authorities are committed to facilitating the provision of residential accommodation and measures which support this goal are very welcome. The general welcome for the provisions of the Bill from Deputies and Senators who have or contributed to the debate so far are noted. There is clearly a perception that the current regulatory controls in place in terms of obtaining planning permission or demonstrating compliance with the building regulations are onerous and excessively time-consuming. We do not share that perception. We consider that the proposals may not confer advantages in terms of delivering projects and will introduce significant risk for developers in the event that their applications ultimately fail on the completion of projects. We have included two comparative tables in our submission, one which illustrates the existing planning and building control provisions and a second which outlines the timescale for the proposed system. We suggest that the existing systems can deliver more regulatory certainty at a faster pace.

The Bill proposes to legislate for entirely different functions within a single statute. Notwithstanding the comments on combining regulatory and building control systems, the provisions of the Planning and Development Acts and the Building Control Acts were set down for entirely different purposes. While the Building Control Acts focus on standards in buildings and construction, the Planning and Development Acts have a much broader environmental and social role beyond the built environment.

The one-stop-shop panel of authorised persons is expected to reach a conclusion on proposed projects compliance regarding all aspects of the building regulations in two weeks or less. We are of the belief that this is not an adequate period in which to consider complex construction technology issues. While a building may well have been correctly designed and significant time taken by the designers to consider these matters, it is the local authority that is expected to approve the designs as per the provisions of the proposed Bill. This is an onerous undertaking and a fundamental departure from long-established principles and existing provisions of building control. If there are difficulties with compliance issues and these are not resolved upon repeat inspection, a development will be deemed to be unsuccessful and the developer must revert to the established planning and building control procedures. This would appear to place the developer in an almost impossible situation. Having entered the one-stop-shop process in good faith, a developer could be left with a completed building which cannot be occupied.

It is our view that the proposed system carries little, if any, advantage in terms of the time necessary to gain approval for a project as against existing procedures and, in addition, transfers significant risk on to the owner of the works, the authorised person from the one-stop-shop panel and the local authority. Having approved, inspected and signed off on the works, the local authority cannot expect to be immune from responsibility and liability if there is a failure in the building that results in harm to occupants, firefighters or others.

I again thank the Chairman and the joint committee for the opportunity of presenting today. We are happy to respond to questions as best we can. The two tables to which I referred earlier outline the comparison in respect of the existing system, which, since the Bill was initially promoted, has been greatly improved by the February 2018 schedule of exempted development. The latter has taken a large chunk of the problem on the planning side out of the equation. The comparison speaks for itself and I would be happy to go through the tables with members.