Mr. Damien Owens:

I thank the committee for inviting Engineers Ireland to the meeting. I am a chartered engineer and the director general of Engineers Ireland. I am joined by Cian O’Dowd, head of public affairs, and John Garrett, a chartered engineer and a member of the Engineers Ireland IS 465 register. He is an independent practitioner and is not an employee of Engineers Ireland. We have submitted an opening statement and I will present an abridged version to save time.

Engineers Ireland has supported the scheme since 2019 when we set up and established the IS 465 register of chartered engineers. In the years since, we have provided feedback on the operation of the scheme much of which has been taken on board by the various stakeholders.

We wish to raise four key issues today. One is mortgageability. Engineers Ireland is aware that for owners of remediated homes, the ability to later sell that home on the property market is an important consideration. The members of the BPFI have confirmed their willingness to lend informed by the advice, certification and professional opinion provided by others in the conveyancing process. This is a restatement of the standard process by which mortgages are approved. This position is held by BPFI members in respect of all remediation options, Nos 1 to 5, inclusive, under the grant scheme. Where a chartered engineer has satisfactorily designed and inspected the remediation works on a property, pursuant to an approved remediation option under the grant scheme, that engineer will issue a certificate of remediation relating to that work. A remediated building has been, according to the rules of the scheme, subject to an assessment, survey, sampling, testing and categorisation by the Housing Agency’s framework chartered engineers, in accordance with the national standard IS 465, through which the agency has determined the remediation option it believes is appropriate, for the affected property. The certificate provided by an engineer, in such instances, will relate only to the work completed pursuant to a determination by the Housing Agency.

The BPFI has confirmed that its members will accept certification by engineers of remediation works carried out on properties within the grant scheme and that these owners of buildings may thereafter apply for home loans, mortgaging these properties, through the standard process applied by lending institutions to such applications. Engineers who are members of Engineers Ireland’s IS 465 register, having completed remediation works in line with the determination of the Housing Agency, will be able to provide a certificate of remediation as described.

The second area relates to later surveys of properties. When a remediated property is sold at a later date, a prospective purchaser is normally advised to have a prepurchase survey at that time. If a property has concrete blocks containing excessive amounts of deleterious materials, it may be unlikely to exhibit the durability or robustness of a block without excessive amounts of these materials and therefore future performance of these blocks is unpredictable. This leads to uncertainty for both the relevant professional attempting to complete a survey as well as a homeowner or prospective purchaser commissioning a survey. This is a challenge for all professionals working in this area. IS 465 is now under much-needed review by the National Standards Authority of Ireland, NSAI. While it is important that the outcome of this review should not be pre-empted in this response, it is nevertheless the view of many engineers that the existing standard is no longer fit-for-purpose and developments in the scientific understanding of this issue must be appropriately considered. The completion of this review is both essential and urgent, especially given the requirement of engineers employed by the Housing Agency to address an “indication of the potential for future deterioration of retained blocks in their current state” within their reports on recommended remedial options. Engineers Ireland is calling on the Government to divert all necessary resources to the NSAI to ensure that a revision is completed by the end of this year. The completion of this revision is necessary to provide clarity and confidence to all those affected by this issue, including building professionals.

Turning to transitional arrangements, we are in the transition phase between two schemes. In the first scheme, a homeowner typically engaged with an engineer to undertake a survey of a property, which required taking samples and testing. Something that has arisen under the new scheme is that recommendation of the home-owners engineer has been challenged by the determination of the Housing Agency engineer.

A survey conducted in March 2024 of members of Engineers Ireland’s IS 465 register has shown that 75% of engineers employed by homeowners have experienced having a recommendation for option by a framework engineer employed by the Housing Agency, with respect to the same property. This has given rise to some understandable concern on the part of members of Engineers Ireland’s IS 465 register, who may question the rationale for the revision of original recommendation of a specific remediation option. This is particularly so, given that the initial recommendation arose on foot of in-person inspection and testing of the property by a member of the register, while a revised determination by the Housing Agency is often based on a desktop assessment and reports. It is submitted that, given the research on a review of IS 465 has not yet been completed, that where a discrepancy exists between the recommendation of a member of the IS 465 register and the Housing Agency, that the higher option, or the more conservative option, of the two should be adopted.

Finally, on the indemnification of engineers. A chartered engineer providing an opinion on the condition of a building will have professional indemnity insurance. There is evidence that some insurance providers are excluding work with deleterious materials from their cover. Given the quantum of remediated properties and the total sum of grants awarded under the scheme may exceed €2 billion, it is unreasonable to expect a relatively small number of professionals to shoulder the potential indemnification costs for very long periods, potentially up to 40 years. Such concerns were evidently considered by the Oireachtas when enacting the legislation governing the scheme. Section 45(1) of the Remediation of Dwellings Damaged by the Use of Defective Concrete Blocks Act 2022 provides indemnification for certain persons. Notably one category of relevant person, described in subsection (d) “any competent building professional as described in section 12 and carrying out their duties under this Act.” This section was not commenced. We recommend that subsection 2(d) should be commenced immediately to address this lacuna indemnification. This is vital to provide protection to professionals working in the area where the scientific understanding of the issue continues to evolve.

I thank members for their attention. My colleagues and I are happy to take questions.