Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Renua Ireland) | Oireachtas source

This is a matter of grave and urgent concern to the 900 residents who occupy 298 apartments in the Longboat Quay development. I am really annoyed and very disappointed that the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government is not here and has been glaringly absent over the past 48 hours since this story became prominent in the national media. There has been virtually no response from the Government, which is really disappointing. It is useful, at least, that we have social media to track the whereabouts of Ministers these days. I note the Minister has been busy hoisting flags and engaging in such activity this afternoon. This is inappropriate. The whole point of the Topical Issue debate was that Ministers would come to the House to be accountable to Deputies on all sides. I do not blame the Minister of State, Deputy Sean Sherlock, but believe the Minister himself should be present to address this matter.

In the past hour, Dublin Docklands Development Authority has made what I regard not only as a derisory offer to the residents concerned but also one that involves a certain degree of funny accounting. Having met the residents and attended the public briefings on this, I am aware that the authority and the receiver involved in this case, which has taken over from developer Bernard McNamara, have both contributed in excess of €1 million already in this case. They have essentially tried to repackage that in an act that is, unfortunately, not unfamiliar on the Government benches. A contribution of €2.75 million towards the cost has now been announced. I assume that can only include the €1 million that has already been effectively paid out. Therefore, in reality, it is a sum of €1.75 million, not €2.75 million. This needs to be clarified. We know Dublin Docklands Development Authority has a history of dealing with funny money and strange forms of accounting but it must take us all for fools by trying to repackage the money in its announcement this afternoon.

A number of points are pertinent in this matter. First, the crisis in Longboat Quay is not unique, unfortunately, as there have been similar examples. We are all familiar with Priory Hall and many other cases. The cases point to a complete and utter absence of accountability in corporate Ireland. This is a trend that has been exposed beyond any doubt over the past seven or eight years. Mr. Bernard McNamara has been through a bankruptcy process and there is no legal recourse to him. That is the legal position. The project architect, the individual who certified the construction as being safe, left Ireland in 2011 and now operates in Ghana. It is highly likely that the issues identified at Longboat Quay will crop up in developments across the country again, and there will be an increasing number of victims of light-touch building regulations.

I have spoken about this in this Chamber and elsewhere before. On the day of the tragedy in Berkeley during the summer, when, because of shoddy development and irresponsible behaviour on the other side of the Atlantic, young Irish citizens sadly lost their lives and many of their friends were injured very seriously, our Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government and his Minister of State were writing to Dublin City Council asking it to relax the building regulations in the city. This is scandalous. The matter I am raising shows just how scandalous it is.

The response of the Government to incidents such as that at Priory Hall was to introduce new building control regulations in 2014. These require assigned certifiers, namely, surveyors, architects, engineers etc. to approve all construction projects. However, this system is deeply flawed and does not address the problem the people of Longboat Quay are facing. The certifiers' independence is greatly undermined by the fact that they are frequently either the designer of the building project or an employee of the developer; they are not independent.

We need to move to the system in the UK where there is independent certification which is controlled by the local authority. It is not left to dodgy and cowboy developers and their employees to certify, often falsify, this type of buildings. We will see further instances of this again and again.

See this speech in context