Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Catherine Martin and the Green Party, and the people who have been working with her behind the scenes, for giving us the opportunity to discuss an important policy issue. While much of our discussion is about the failures of the past, the context for these legislative proposals is the future. We are about to, hopefully, see the largest build and refurbishment programme in the public and private sectors in recent history. What better time to ensure the regulations put in place now in respect of building control, fire safety standards, etc., are of world-class standing as the building programme commences.

I would like to reflect on a number of local experiences because they will add to fully understanding the nature of the problems with the current system, including the post-2014 regime. These difficulties do not only relate to private builds; they relate to affordable housing schemes involving local authorities and private developers and local authority-owned social housing development, and it is important not to lose sight of that. In my constituency, for example, one large local authority housing development built at the height of the boom was the subject of so many breaches of building regulations that one of the blocks that had been handed over to an approved housing body, AHB, had to be transferred back to the local authority within a short number of years because the cost of tackling the breaches was so great that the AHB could not cope with it. The residents in that large development, which was tenanted in 2007, still live with many of those regulatory failures. Even though it was built under the pre-2014 regulatory system, no remedy is available to those tenants who are today living with damp and other difficulties with their properties.

There was another good quality affordable housing scheme in my constituency until one of the residents discovered that there was no fire stopping and fire safety measures in place. It took two years of hard campaigning to get the local authority and the builder, who was still trading, around a table to eventually come up with a remedy but that should never have taken so long. What if the developer had gone bust and there was no money or potential reputational damage to his or her business to resolve the problems?

As others have mentioned, management companies in large private sector developments are dealing with significant legacy issues and costs whether the units are owned or rented. Significant safety issues - although, thankfully, they are not fire safety issues - have yet to be resolved and it is unlikely they will be for some time to come. Even though the system of certification has changed, the remedies available to social and affordable or private housing tenants who find themselves living with construction defects have not been adequately addressed by the Government, which is all the more reason to support the motion.

I accept the fact that the Minister has outlined changes and that BCAR was introduced but his assertion that this is not self-regulation is unacceptable. It is simply a better form of self-regulation but there is potential for conflicts of interest because while the assigned certifiers have to protect their professional reputation, they are employed by the developer and, unfortunately, as we experienced at the height of the boom, that can lead to problems.

There are also issues relating to an inability to control costs whether it is a race to the bottom or significant additions to the cost of producing units, which would be better controlled in the system outlined by Deputies Cowen and Casey, which we are examining in the housing committee.

I am a strong advocate of resourcing local authorities properly but they experienced the greatest loss of public sector employees during the recession with a 23% reduction in staff. Even if the best regulatory regime in the world is in place, if they do not have the staff to carry out inspections, the regulations will never be enforced. We need greater support for local authorities in terms of resourcing.

One of the great merits of the Green Party motion is the proposal for a building authority whose function would be to assist co-ordination, improve standards, gather data and potentially be a location for information for people who discover defects in their properties for mediation or adjudication. That would be an eminently sensible addition to the important role of local authorities. It would not be a quango but it would be an important regulatory instrument. Even though the Minister will not support the proposal tonight, I urge him to reconsider that, particularly because it will be one of the recommendations in the Oireachtas committee report on the same issue. There was such a strong feeling among all committee members on this issue that we took a unanimous decision a number of months ago to hold a series of hearings and to invite industry, statutory and departmental representative as well as expert academic opinion and submissions from people affected by these issues. I am hopeful that we will produce a good, detailed report with further legislative recommendations. I hope the Minister will consider all of them. A building authority in addition to an adequate regime for dealing with defects will form part of that.

Sinn Féin has tabled a short, friendly amendment, which I understand the Green Party is willing to accept, in respect of the fire safety issues. Given what we have heard about Newbridge and my own experience, there is a need for an urgent review of the existing regulations to ensure that not only are they being adequately enforced but that they are up to scratch in light of the recent tragic events in London. One of the issues that has emerged from the interesting debate on the back of that tragedy is the increased use of combustible materials in construction generally, something which many of us not directly involved in the industry have been surprised to learn. The increased use of such materials is not in and of itself a fire risk but there clearly needs to be a review of these materials, as provided for in our amendment, to ascertain if our fire safety regulations and compliance regime should be strengthened to tackle the issue. The cladding used on Grenfell Tower was not lawful.

Despite that fact, it was used, with the tragic effects we have seen.

With regard to the Fianna Fáil amendment, I want to acknowledge the work of Deputies Cowen and Casey in the discussions we have been having. In this debate there has been quite a lot of consensus. People do not want to play party politics with an issue of such importance because we want to try to improve the system of consensus and unanimity. While I will not support their amendment, it is only because I think there are parts of the Green Party motion which are stronger. Nonetheless, there is very little of what Deputies Cowen and Casey have outlined today that I would disagree with and I believe we can return to those issues in the committee report to the satisfaction of everybody.

While we are discussing all of these policy issues, we have to remember that in all of the developments we have discussed, whether we have named them or reserved the names, there are real families who are living either in substandard accommodation or living in fear that the accommodation they are living in may be substandard. There are also a huge number of developments where residents are not even aware they are not compliant with building or fire safety regulations. I go back to the example I used from my own constituency. The only reason the firestopping was discovered to be non-existent was that the homeowner decided to do renovations on a property that was sold to them with a local authority grant as part of an affordable housing scheme. Again, to re-emphasise the point, not only did they discover that, but it took two years for the local authority in question and the developer to step up to the plate. Even if we think BCAR are great and do not need to be improved, there are many other issues in terms of enforcement and compliance that do need to be urgently looked at, which is why Sinn Féin is more than happy to support the motion.

What I would urge the Minister and his new team to do is, in addition to today's debate, to sit down and work with us when our committee comes forward with recommendations, both in terms of their own party members on the committee and in their own engagement with us. If we make a proposal that at first sight does not seem to conform with their view of how we should proceed, they should engage with us, listen to us and deliberate with us so we can come out at the end of this process, starting with this motion today and the committee report in a few weeks time, and improve the system to the very best standard possible. This would mean that those people currently living in defective buildings can get some remedy and we would not be here in five or ten years' time, after we have seen a significant increase in new builds and refurbishments of public and private housing, with either the existing types of defects coming back to haunt us or new problems. I believe this could be a real turning point and a real example of this House working collectively, Opposition and Government together, but that requires all of us to sit down and work on a collegiate basis. If we do that, I think we can put together a building control compliance and consumer protection system that is better than anywhere else in the world, one we will be proud to put our names to.

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