Dáil debates

Thursday, 29 March 2018

Leaders' Questions (Resumed)

 

12:20 pm

Photo of Tommy BroughanTommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the assurances the Minister has given about the residents being rehoused. He mentioned inspection but the reality is that it was the Governments of which he was a member for the past seven and a half years that slashed the numbers of local authority fire safety inspectors. As Deputies Coveney and Murphy know, it has been estimated that we need to at least quadruple the number of fire safety officers in this country over the next several years. We may need as many as to 300 personnel. What really infuriates people, as the Tánaiste knows, is that some of the developers who built these shoddy and dangerous buildings during the Celtic tiger boom, under the regulations brought in by the Fianna Fáil Government, are back in business and building again, having been helped by the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, and ourselves. Surely in discussions of the Building Control (Construction Industry Register Ireland) Bill 2017, which has had pre-legislative assessment, that is an issue that should be directly addressed. As a former Minister with responsibility for this area, Deputy Coveney will be familiar with Volume 1 of part B of the Building Regulations, that is, the fire safety regulations that relate to public buildings such as schools, nursing homes, offices and so on. When will the revision of those regulations be available to the House?

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