Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)

As recently as 19 January 2004, the RIAI was obliged to make a submission to the Competition Authority in regard to this matter. Section 6 of the executive summary of that submission states:

1. The greater majority of EU Member States have either registration of title system with control of function or a combination of both.

2. The proposals under the Building Control Bill represent a milder form of regulation than in many EU states, where function also is controlled.

3. The question of registration of function has previously been considered by the Fair Trade Commission which reported at Section 8.35 as follows:

"It is concluded that it would be possible to achieve a registration of title system for the professions of architect, quantity surveyor, building surveyor, valuer and other professions within the construction industry which would not be unreasonably restrictive of competition. It is considered that, on balance, a registration of title system would be in the overall public interest and it is recommended that a system be introduced."

The executive summary continues in that vein.

To put the matter in context with respect to the numbers involved here of which we are aware — we are not aware of all of them — Article 6 of the executive summary states:

There are over 2,200 registered RIAI members and several hundred non-RIAI members. Concentration in this market is extremely low insofar as there are relatively few large practices. Entry from abroad is easy. There is no evidence of over charging or exploitation by practitioners.

The conventional architectural system of design and designers and those who would comply under this area will function fairly well.

On Committee Stage, we will deal with the detail of the system of appointments and the ratio of three architects to four lay people, etc. On the technical assessment side, the Minister should ensure — not that he would ever be tempted to do this — that the secretary of the cumann in Donegal should not be appointed in order to obtain expenses and remain on this committee. Those involved should, by all means, be lay people but they should have a knowledge of technical qualifications and should come from parallel systems or have a knowledge of certification of standards of one kind or another. This committee should not be like the prison visiting committees which, frankly, were a scandal under various Administrations. I wish to put down a marker that we will deal with this matter, particularly in terms of the technical aspect, in some detail on Committee Stage. There is no difficulty with registration and appeals where lay people are involved. However, where such individuals comprise a majority in respect of technical assessments, they should have some knowledge of evaluating professional competence in some area, although not necessarily in that of architecture.

One area in respect of which I want to put down a marker is the transposition of the energy performance of buildings directive. The latter is the elephant in the corner that we ignore at our peril. The Minister said in his succinct contribution, for which I thank him, that 50% of our energy consumption occurs in the building area, either in its construction or its operation. Deputy O'Dowd referred to the fact that the non-performance of that building in terms of insulation, because we are wasting the energy, still results in more elderly Irish people dying from hypothermia — probably in isolated rural buildings across the countryside — than is the case with their counterparts in Norway, which has a much lower base temperature in winter.

Europe is facing an energy crisis. We saw what happened to the Ukraine at Christmas with the arbitrary decision of the Russians. That matter has not gone away. Ireland is an island situated beside another island, both of which lie off the coast of mainland of Europe and we are energy takers. Our energy consumption, in terms of imported energy, has risen as a total percentage. We have no energy policy. We have a hybrid Department that is utterly confused. I am not asking the Minister to respond to this but the Government that replaces the current Administration will put in place a Department of Energy with a specific energy proposal. We will campaign for a common European energy policy, which is absolutely necessary. While one third of the buildings that exist have been built in the past ten years — that is a welcome sign of our prosperity — two thirds with desperately high levels of energy loss still remain.

In January 2009, anybody wishing to sell a house will require an energy certificate. Some 80,000 houses have been constructed and presumably sold in the past year and at least 160,000 second-hand houses were also sold. That means there will have to be 160,000 inspections because one will not be able to sell a house in three years' time without giving a certificate that can show — as when one opens the door of the fridge — the energy loss of one's house. From where will we get the building inspectors to do that? Where will we find the building surveyors and the engineers with the qualifications to provide that service? What will happen if a cowboy writes a certificate stating that a house is energy compliant and I buy it and suddenly discover that my central heating oil bill is twice or three times that envisaged? If oil costs US$70 a barrel now, it will probably cost US$100 in two to three years' times in light of the level of consumption. The supply of oil has spiked. We are now coming down the other side of Mount Everest. Demand is increasing and known supplies are reducing. One does not have to have a PhD in economics to figure out that when those two factors are at play in the marketplace, the price must inevitably rise.

We must start to reduce the level of our energy consumption. In the biggest area of our built environment, the domestic sector, we have this legal requirement and we are reasonably well advanced compared to other EU states. It is a complex area and time constraints prevent me from discussing it in some detail in light of the briefing material I received from UCD and elsewhere. This is an energy crisis problem that involves the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, local authorities, the Department of Finance, FÁS and the Department of Education and Science. We need to provide a crash course for people to be able to meet the demand of the marketplace in terms of buying and selling of the order of 150,000 houses. Those houses will not be able to be sold from 2009 onwards if certificates of compliance relating to existing buildings cannot be obtained in respect of them. The first impact will kick in next January with regard to new buildings. That should be reasonably easy because of the components going into it. However, I can see a great deal of work in the future for Duncan Stewart and an entire army of those like him.

We can no longer pretend that we did not know this was going to happen. It is going to happen. It is happening now because we are discussing it here. In his reply, perhaps the Minister will indicate how we can gear up towards that compliance, how we might provide the crash course to which I refer, how the capacity of our IT system measures up, how we might provide continual professional development for an array of different people and how ways can be found for individuals to equip themselves to deal with this matter. There is no point introducing good legislation that contains very desirable objectives if we do not equip ourselves with the resources to implement it.

I welcome the Bill. The Labour Party will not oppose it on Second Stage. There are a number of issues that need to be teased out on Committee Stage. I wish to repeat the fundamental point, as highlighted by Deputy Twomey, that the existing system for monitoring the standard of construction and the building regulations is simply not working. The boom has brought about many benefits for many people but it has also brought many cowboys into the arena. It is only when the dust settles that one can see the ruins. If somebody has bought a bum building, the last thing he or she will do is shout about it because he or she will want to offload it. He or she will, therefore, be fairly quiet about it. That is undoubtedly what is happening.

The current regulatory system of monitoring, invigilation and surveying is not working. No one is seeking an army of surveyors to inspect everything. The bureaucracy associated with that would be intolerable and would stifle initiative. Having regard to what has happened in the financial sector, we should determine whether we can do something similar in the construction sector, with all that implies.

We must start talking to people about energy. I would love to believe the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources could work together in this regard. Perhaps this should be a cross-referenced type of activity. It is a question of energy conservation and building compliance. No Members other than those in this Chamber and a few anoraks who are into energy policy are aware of what is coming down the tracks within two to three years regarding energy compliance for buildings and what is involved in obtaining the energy compliance certificate one requires.

When the Minister is concluding this legislation, I urge him to consider, in conjunction with the Department of Education and Science and all the other bodies with a role to play, how we should equip ourselves on the field to ensure we can implement the legislation in a way that complements the market and does not frustrate it or screw it up.

See this speech in context