Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

I am glad to have an opportunity to speak on this legislation. I welcome its coming to the House, albeit after a very protracted gestation period. No subject will generate more discussion at the present time than this one.

The Building Control Act, which passed some years ago, was supposed to control, regulate and ensure development took place in an orderly fashion and that consumers and householders, whether renting or purchasing, were protected. Unfortunately, that did not happen. Nor does it happen yet. The economic circumstances that have overtaken the country make the position even worse for those concerned.

I will make one reference to the national house building guarantee scheme, which used to protect house owners. It is ineffective. With regard to the pyrite referred to by Deputy Broughan, it does not work beyond a certain point. People who have been affected by that plague are faced with the responsibility of rebuilding their houses from the ground up. In the 1980s, when we were less developed than at present, it was possible for the house building guarantee scheme to cover, in its entirety, any reconstruction work that had to take place in a house.

I was looking at some houses in my own constituency recently. Someone suggested that they did not need to be rebuilt because the side walls had been pushed out by only an inch and a half or thereabouts and that a little plaster or mortar would be sufficient. Unfortunately, that kind of nonsense only deludes us. We should not allow the public to be deluded and conned by that kind of nonsense.

I cannot believe that some of the things that happened during the boom period have gone unchallenged, with no recompense to the consumer. I cannot understand why properties were sold by agents of one kind or another to unsuspecting members of the public. Purchasers approached financial institutions seeking money to buy properties, having been assured by their legal representatives and estate agents that they were sound. The financial institutions asked only how much did the purchaser want. There was no limit on the sums being borrowed. The problems would then emerge. Perhaps a series of planning applications had been refused and planning permission was not possible. The purchaser was then stuck with a useless property. There are many cases of people who are stuck on landlocked sites or on land that, for one reason or another, is incapable of taking development. What happens? Nothing. Many of these cases have been in the courts. I have been to court on many occasions to see what was happening. This is appalling and the Minister must be aware of it.

I am not sure that any recompense is going to come to those people by way of this legislation. As sure as one door is closed someone will open another, find a loophole and do the same thing to a new group of unsuspecting people who have not been conned yet but who are just about to be.

The measures contained in the Bill are fine. The question is will they work and how soon will they address the issues to which other Members have already referred?

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