Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

I welcome the belated appearance of the Building Control Bill 2005. If I am not mistaken, it was listed on the 1997 programme for Government among all the other papers presented by the Deputies who were in Opposition at the time. In the last year of this Dáil, the Government has finally got around to it. I commend my colleague, Deputy Quinn, who raised the issue of this Bill with the Taoiseach at least ten times on the Order of Business.

The Bill is based on the report, entitled Building Control: Strengthening the System, which was prepared in May 2004 by a working party of the Association of Consulting Engineers of Ireland, the Institute of Engineers of Ireland, the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland and the Society of Chartered Surveyors. This working group came into being owing to the clear implication that implementation of building controls had been grossly deficient since they were introduced in 1976. The group sought to bring rules, law and order to this part of the construction industry, especially in respect of the qualifications of professional people and the new energy directive on household buildings. I commend the Minister on bringing forward the Bill at long last.

However, this is just too late for my constituency and for most of the Dublin region. The horse has bolted and we are stuck with what we have which is the direct result of the disgraceful behaviour that occurred on county councils throughout the 1980s and 1990s. This behaviour created the "get rich quick" developers who preyed on councillors and delivered high-rise, high-density, unplanned development on the fringes of Dublin city and county. These developments will be a disaster in the future.

There is much concern in my constituency of Dublin North-East about the development of the so-called north fringe. This is a monumental development of more than 20,000 housing units which will produce an additional population of around 60,000 in my constituency alone. If we include the constituency of Dublin West and the south fringe of Dublin North, especially the massive expansion of Swords, the capacity for getting it wrong is very grave.

We hear calls from all quarters for accountability, yet our leading newspapers, such as The Irish Times and the Irish Independent, receive a large part of their finances from auctioneering companies and developers through their massive property supplements. Last week's property supplement of The Irish Times was larger than the main newspaper itself. There is also a commercial supplement on another day. Our other leading national newspaper has similar property sections. Can there be any relationship between the fact that the print media is so well funded by the current development process and the fact that we have not heard calls for the reform of the auctioneering profession, the process of planning and development, the outrageous powers of councillors to rezone land and the planning powers of county and city managers?

The north fringe forum is a body which I proposed four or five years ago. It tries desperately to invigilate the massive development of our constituency. If I were a Dutch MP and we were planning the north side of Amsterdam, there would be real democratic engagement. The existing residents would have some input, along with their councillors and their MPs and we might be able to come up with a framework of development for the expansion of the city that is acceptable to everybody. That did not happen in Dublin where an elite minority of developers behaved in a criminal fashion over the past two decades to ensure that we will be left with a high-density ring to our city with very little social infrastructure. At many meetings of the north fringe forum we find that we do not have schools, primary health care centres or hospitals nor do we have public transport facilities such as park and ride. We do not have the facilities that should be in a modern development.

We can see the end result in today's property supplement of The Irish Times, where one headline reads "Keen prices in last phase of new city quarter". A price of €250,000 is quoted for a one bedroom apartment that measures 63 sq. m., with prices going up to €410,000. Another puff piece is headlined, "Value for first timers at the Northern Cross", which lists a 45 sq. m. apartment at €265,000, rising to €365,000. These are new apartments located in an area which has no social infrastructure. They would certainly fail the current building regulation proposals that are before us today. I am nearly certain that there are no lifts in these apartments nor access for people with disability, yet they are on the market. I also believe that the energy requirements of the new EU directive are not being fulfilled.

The key problem to this is that there is no social infrastructure in tandem with the new developments. I know that in the west side of the city there is a strategic development zone at Adamstown which is a much smaller development than that in my constituency. We should at least have such a zone in Belcamp which is located in the north fringe area. That does not currently exist and we are developing a high-rise, high-density city which is reminiscent of north Paris. We should remember the events that occurred there last year owing to the social alienation that existed. The Government is presiding over this development in the golden age of developers. That is the tragic reality. Even with the existing controls, the big problem is that part L of the building regulations is not being enforced or policed, for example, with regard to energy efficiency.

The horse has bolted in the case of much of the development in my constituency, the various sections of which have been in the proposal stage since about 1999 and where, over its four major phases in Baldoyle, Donaghmede, what is now being called Belmayne and Belcamp, there is already outline or proposed permission for between 16,000 to 20,000 units. These regulations will not be any good to that area and they will not solve the difficult problems with which I and my successor public representatives for the Dublin North-East constituency will be faced. Some fundamental issues relating to public infrastructure have not been addressed. This is not just additional infrastructure but issues such as the area's hydrology. There has been no hydrology report, for example, on the two areas closest to the sea. The Government went out of its way to ensure no flood plain studies would be carried out in the Dublin or any other coastal region. All it wished to do was continue to add the apartments.

As one watches the apartment boxes being lifted into place from high cranes, box after box like Lego, one wonders about the standard and quality of those apartments and what the future holds for the new residents who will pay expensive prices for them. In many cases, the developers themselves will pay for these apartments. There is a growing tendency on the part of developers to buy or hold half the street and this is something over which the Minister has no control. Young people who put their names down last September for houses in the Stapolin area of Baldoyle, which were priced at €350,000, discovered a few months later when they contacted Sherry Fitzgerald auctioneers and the developer, Menollys, that all the houses at that price were being held by the builders as investors. The next cheapest house available was €410,000.

I disagree with my colleague's statement that supply and demand are equalising. The reality is that, as Deputy Gilmore said, tens of thousands of young people have given up hope of being able to afford their own house or apartment. They just cannot manage due to the constant, vicious manipulation of the system, over which this Government presides, which went from rezoning and stroking to lashing through plans and approving high density development without the social infrastructure. Ultimately, there is a golden or iron alliance of auctioneers and developers. Why is there is no control of auctioneers Bill? Where are those regulations? We will not see that under the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Government because they are too closely involved with that area of society.

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