Dr. Richard Manton:

I echo the Chairman's comments on the qualifications of assigned certifiers under SI 9 of 2014, known as BCAR. Individuals with such qualifications are registered construction professionals, for example, chartered engineers, which we as Engineers Ireland award, registered architects and chartered building surveyors. It is imperative that whoever assesses designs and conducts inspections on site is qualified to an appropriate level. As the Chairman recognised, these are complex building projects and are becoming even more complex for good reason, that being, to ensure the highest safety standards. Therefore, we would not like to see any step back from that.

Related to that is the type of inspection regime. I would be concerned if there was any step back from the current level of inspection. A point was also made about independence, but we can revert to that at another time. The current BCAR inspection regime is based on risk assessments and assures that there are inspections at key, critical moments in the building process. We do not want to see inspection only being carried out at the end when the key building components have been covered up and it is otherwise difficult to see what has happened on site.