Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I must apologise as we have Housing Finance Agency legislation at 3.50 p.m. so some of us will have pop out to deal with that in the Chamber and then come back in. To provide some context, the original idea for this session when we agreed it before the summer recess was that in anticipation of the transfer of responsibility for the Property Services Regulatory Authority and the Multi-Unit Developments Act to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, we could kick-start the autumn with a serious discussion of those to try to influence the thinking of the Minister and the Department on these really important issues. It is very disappointing that the Property Services Regulatory Authority declined the invitation. Legal authority for that organisation has transferred to the Department and it would have been good to have it here. I also wish to express some frustration that responsibility for the Multi-Unit Developments Act has not been transferred across, which means that we will not have the Housing Agency or others here today. It is an important issue for this committee and we will be coming back to it along with the issue of defects.

I wish to put on record that this is not just a legacy issue. Obviously, there are legacy issues and we will talk about those. There is an increasing number of new multi-unit developments, a number of which have even more complicated challenges than their predecessors from the Celtic tiger era. In my constituency, we are finding brand new challenges around car parking designation, with some being public and others remaining within the owners' management company and disputes between residents and the owners' management company about that. We are finding significant challenges in terms of budgets. Most members of the public would be astonished to know that to get a budget through an AGM, only 25% of the votes are needed, which seems counterintuitive in terms of building consensus. We are also getting far more mixed-tenure developments, where there are cost-rental tenure, social housing tenure, private rental tenure and owner occupation. This is creating all sorts of additional challenges, which I want to name because this is the context we have here. We should write to the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration and urge him to bring forward that legislation to ensure that those powers can be transferred as a matter of urgency. That ultimately needs to be done.

Could Mr. Montague list in shorthand what key areas of reform of the Multi-Unit Developments Act the MUD Act Reform Group would like to see when it eventually comes to the Department of Housing, Heritage and Local Government and the Minister takes responsibility for it? I ask Mr. Lambe to list some of the day-to-day challenges of OMCs because Clúid is centrally involved in that. From an operational point of view, what type of things would a review of the Multi-Unit Developments Act need to see reformed but also in terms of regulation of OMCs and regulation and strengthening of the Property Services Regulatory Authority? I might not get to Mr. Doran in this round but I will get back to him. Not Our Fault is at the centre of the situation relating to the issuer of the interim fire safety fund. Could Mr. Doran give us an update on that? I want to spend some time on defects in the second half of the meeting. Could Mr. Doran give me his view of where the legislation is coming?