Mr. Pat Montague:

It is a huge problem. Coming back to the point Mr. Doran was making, it is having an immediate practical effect. There are four projects that are like pilot projects trying to work their way through the system in the interim remediation scheme. This is the emergency fire remediation stuff. It has been discovered that two of them have issues in relation to common areas. In one, it was clear earlier on, but that application cannot progress now until the OMC owns the common areas. The view, which I think is very much coming from the Department of public expenditure, is that the State cannot fund works if the OMC does not own the areas in which the works are going to be carried out. In another pathfinder, it has been discovered in the last month that while the OMC owns most of the common areas, it does not own all of the common areas, so its application has stopped.

The Housing Agency did an exercise that went through the over 200 apartment developments that had applied to the interim remediation scheme. Of them, about 23% - nearly a quarter - have said that they do not own the common areas or all the common areas. Basically, each company has to go to the person who does own the common area and get him or her to pass it on. In some cases, however, we are talking about the original builder-developer, who does not want to pass on ownership. That is a major roadblock. In one of the pathfinder pilot projects, the company that used to own, or has nominal ownership of, the common areas has been liquidated. We are then talking about having to go through the courts to sort out these issues. We are talking about time and money. Meanwhile, the applications for emergency fire safety works cannot progress because of this.