Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 20 November 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Impact of Brexit on Ireland's Housing Market: Discussion (Resumed)

11:00 am

Ms Sarah Neary:

On the uncertainty issue, we would all like more clarity on this. We are trying to be as clear as possible about whether the rules that are in place and what Europe is telling us remain in place. When we have clarity, such as when we got the correspondence from Europe around the CPR rules, we disseminate that to all the stakeholders. The CPR will exist post-Brexit for construction products going on the market here.

In terms of the effect on cost, anything that affects the costs of materials or products and labour will have an effect on construction costs and delivery. These, both the common travel area and any trade tariffs, are key issues in the negotiation of a withdrawal agreement.

For our particular area of responsibility in the notification process on that underlying certification of construction products, we are saying "prepare for a hard Brexit" which means one must use a notified body established in a member state, be that in Ireland or in Europe. As Mr. Wickham mentioned, we have had a number of inquiries from UK notified bodies. Some of them are in the process of going through the national accreditation body. We have a process, which we have on our website. Any queries that we get, we answer in a timely fashion in order to support that and make it as easy as possible for these bodies to establish in Ireland and to become notified bodies. That is what we can do for the process.

Did Mr. Hogan want to say something on the NDP levy?