Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Like my party colleague, I cautiously welcome this Bill. It is about time we started regulating the construction industry properly but there is still a great deal of work to be done to make the Bill fit for purpose so that it delivers what we all want to see delivered.

In my city of Cork, we have a housing development on Kilmore Road in Knocknaheeny where construction stopped in early 2021 and has now resumed at a snail’s pace. The only reason for this I can get from the local authority is that there are some issues with the quality of the work. This goes to the heart of the Bill. Public money is being used to build these desperately needed public houses and there is anger in the community that I represent at housing that people badly need being delayed because of a discussion or disagreement about the quality of the work. There needs to be more transparency. Where there are issues with local authorities’ construction contracts, we need to be able to get answers. We are in the middle of a housing crisis. We cannot have the construction of homes being halted for no clear reason. There are people waiting on these houses and hoping they will get one. They are being left for months on end without construction taking place or being completed. What is being done to regulate these contracts?

I welcome the Bill but there are serious issues with it like there were with previous regulations. In 2019, the then Minister, former Deputy Eoghan Murphy, introduced regulations to try to stop short-term lets like Airbnb. We are coming into the summer and I know of people who have been given notice to quit because their landlords are going to put their homes up on Airbnb. Since the regulation was enacted, only 76 applications for Airbnb have been made across the State. If someone looked at Airbnb’s website like I did this morning, he or she would see hundreds of short-term lets. That is in clear breach of the regulation. This has to do with the point I am trying to make to the Minister – if this legislation is not strong enough or good enough, we will see the same breaches and disrespect that we see for a regulation that was only introduced just over two years ago. This issue needs to be resolved. We are seeing properties being put up on Airbnb when there should be families in them.

I wish to make a short point that goes to the heart of the Bill, that being, housing maintenance. We have seen what has happened because of a lack of building control. It has a domino effect, with housing maintenance subsequently needed. My local authority of Cork City Council has no preventative maintenance. It was stopped a number of years ago because of budgetary problems. Due to the then Government’s decision to put an embargo on staff recruitment ten years ago, local authorities have outsourced much if not all of their housing maintenance to contractors. I have people coming to my office who have been waiting not weeks or months, but years for housing maintenance to be carried out. This means that, if there are problems with houses because of how they were built or a lack of proper building controls or inspections, people will be living for years in houses that are not being maintained and have serious issues. I have raised with the council the issue of delays in reletting the voids and boarded up houses that are on every estate in Cork. It alone has 500 boarded up houses. Due to there not having been preventative maintenance of these properties, the cost of reletting them is astronomical. People have been waiting on housing maintenance for years. Some are living in disgraceful conditions because local authorities do not have the money to carry out preventative maintenance.

We want to support and work with the Minister on this Bill.

Often enough I come in here and criticise the Minister. If, however, we all pull together, we can bring forward legislation everyone can support.

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