Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I appreciate the Minister's taking time to put the rationale for his case on the record of the House, and I accept that this is a reforming Bill which will greatly improve the living circumstances of many tens of thousands of people. However, it is a great pity to spoil the ship for a hap'orth of tar, which is what we are doing here. I accept that amendment No. 16, for example, goes some way towards addressing some of my concerns, but, as he pointed out himself, the process is not mandatory. It is a milk-and-water gesture towards the recommendations of the Law Reform Commission.

For some reason, this House cannot bring itself to legislate for builders to complete their work properly. There are many good builders in Ireland, some of whom do very good work and so on and so forth, but there is a cultural inhibition about requiring that their work be completed to an acceptable standard. If there was a requirement in Irish law that builders could not be given planning permission for new developments until they had finished the previous ones to a proper standard, we would not have the kind of problems we have, but for some reason we are reluctant to do this.

If we consider the glut of legislation in the Department of Justice and Law Reform alone - whether the areas of justice and law reform should ever have been brought back together is an open question - we can see that this Bill will not be revisited lightly. This is our opportunity to deal with these issues. The notion of a bond is a good one. If a small percentage of the purchase price was allocated to the OMC and there was a system of arbitration to determine what constituted completion to standard, that would result in an immense improvement. All of the disputes envisaged by the Minister are not likely to happen. These are not the problems we have. This new type of housing, which has taken off in Ireland in the last ten years, sometimes works very well. People also pay a healthy tariff for those that work well.

However, some of them do not work so well and it is possible to look down the road a little and to acknowledge and foresee the problems that will arise, especially in some of the blocks in urban areas. Were the amendment to be accepted by the Minister it would make a contribution to provide against that in future.

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