Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent)

I fully support the Private Members' motion tabled by the United Left Alliance, ULA, and supported by the Independent Members of the Technical Group.

Last night in the House the Minister outlined what is already contained in the Building Control Act 1990 and listed how he has no responsibility for the enforcement of the Act. Unsurprisingly, he outlined that the responsibility falls to local authorities, which have not been fulfilling their obligations in terms of enforcement. We have good regulation and legislation in this country but we have a complete lack of enforcement. The Government's role should be to ensure that local authorities are held accountable for enforcement and also to ensure that the resources are available to those who must enforce regulation so that they can do their job and ensure compliance. The Government cannot abdicate its responsibility in that regard.

The Government must introduce legislation to ensure that HomeBond and other insurance policies can live up to the obligations of developers and builders, that developers and builders themselves can live up to those obligations and the local authorities that are responsible for enforcing the legislation are able to do that and that they do so. That is where the Government's responsibility lies. It is wrong for the Minister to outline that he does not have such responsibility.

The Minister indicated he is to bring forward proposals to change the situation. He referred to shared services within local authorities and how local authorities will come together on a regional basis. In my local authority in Donegal one person has been working in building control. Donegal is the fourth largest county in the country and a significant amount of development has taken place there. If the person responsible for building control in Donegal is shared between Sligo and Leitrim, where one person in each of those counties is also responsible, there will still not be any enforcement or control. As the Minister outlined in his contribution last night we need enforcement and control to ensure the quality of the built environment. People engaged architects and others to design houses, and builders to build them, and relied on insurance such as HomeBond to ensure that if problems arose in the future they would have some come-back. They need all of that and they need to be able to fall back on the State to ensure that regulations and compliance is enforced and that the standards are enforced across the board. It is not right to expect home owners who have no expertise or ability to ensure that is done, and to expect them to deal with the situation and say they must paddle their own canoe and deal with whatever problems arise with their house by means of civil remedies. The system of self-certification is not working. There was intense lobbying prior to the introduction of the Building Control Act to ensure that self-certification would be introduced and that local authorities were removed from the process of overseeing construction projects. That has led to the current situation. The Minister must ensure the situation is not allowed to continue.

In all cases the last input local authorities have is when a planning application is granted because they do not have the resources or ability to enforce proper building control. We must ensure such a system is in place, that inspection rates are increased and that continuous inspections are made throughout the construction phase to ensure that standards are maintained. Only by doing that can we ensure that people are required to live up to the building standards required by the self-certification system to which they have signed up. I call on the Minister to ensure that the system in future guarantees that people can have confidence that they will get a product that stands up to wear and tear.

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