Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

I was one of the 500 people who made a submission on this for reasons the Minister will know well, the ongoing disaster in regard Priory Hall and the incredible situation in terms of pyrite infestation of homes, estimates of which range up to 60,000 housing units. When I got the draft building control (amendment) regulations that the Minister sent us, on which we have had a discussion in the Dáil - I did not get to speak on it - I thought that this was a cop out. Essentially the Minister has left the disastrous system of flawed self-regulation in situ. I am sure he will agree with me that he who pays the piper calls the tune. At each stage of the planning, design and completion process, such as articles 8 and 10, professionals who have worked for developers will essentially be responsible for sending in these compliance certificates. In Spain, a country that has had a massive building boom similar to ourselves, when an house or an apartment was built no services are provided unless the local authorities inspectors pass the building in question. That is my understanding of the position there. Why did the Minister cop out on this in respect of these regulations? We were expecting big things from him and that he would take a grip of this industry so that when it hopefully restarts in the next few years regulations should be introduced, in the way they should be, by the public sector, by local authorities and ultimately by his Department. It should not be the case that developers and their minions, architects and all the rest should decide for us.

On the consultation process, how may buyers of deficient homes, bearing in mind that a home is the biggest investment a person will make in his or her lifetime, did the Minister talk to before he came up with these very poor draft regulations?

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