John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Ceann Comhairle took me by surprise. I wish him and the Minister of State a happy new year. I warmly welcome this Bill. I will go through bits of it at random, if I may. Words and phrases such as "mica", "pyrite", "water ingress", "water egress" and "fire defects" have become too much part of the lexicon of the experience of people who have bought their homes in the last two decades. The report of the Construction Defects Alliance, particularly in relation to the construction of apartments, is depressing. This Bill, as previous speakers indicated , is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, or perhaps a once-in-the-history-of-the-State opportunity, to get it right. Taking different points in no particular or hierarchical order, I wish to state that the role of the gatekeeper of this register has to be as solid and as foolproof as it gets. I urge the Minister of State and his officials to look at that. I am not so sure that putting the Construction Industry Federation in charge of patrolling the register would instill great confidence in me. The public have to be instilled with great confidence in this. It is a matter of fact. We have not dealt with balconies, fire defects or water ingress. To his great credit, the Minister is leading the charge on this and there will be movement on it this year. When we look at the cost of shoddy building or building with materials that should have been identified as being defective at source, we see the enormous cost that the taxpayer is going to have to shoulder over the next decade to make these homes right. We should say that this Bill will not just mark the end of it, but will represent the end of it. It should not be a stepping stone in the right direction; it should be the final destination of this.

Many of us are fortunate to own homes. I am conscious of those who do not; perhaps they are the lucky ones right now. We know, and it has been said by previous speakers, that it represents the biggest expenditure that we will ever make in our lifetime. To walk into a home - whether it is an apartment, a bungalow, a one-off house, a house in an estate or a Georgian building - and to find that it is in need of remediation and that the owner has absolutely no recourse whatsoever expect to foot the bill for remediation themselves is a scandal beyond words. This is a once-for-all opportunity to get it right. It must be tough. It must send out the strongest message to the industry that this will never again be tolerated. It must be policed and there must be implications for those who break the rules or for those who employ those who break the rules. There cannot be an arm's length position in relation to this.

On the issue of schools, I think of the schools in my constituency. I am sure there are some in the Minister of State's constituency. I looked up the CIRI website today to see if Western Building Systems is registered voluntarily on the system. I am sure that if it was, it has been removed. Is the State obliged, in its building contracts, to ensure, as part of the tender process right now under the voluntary code, that builders engaged to build our schools, community centres and libraries are actually even voluntarily registered on the existing register? Will it be a requirement, under this new register, if the State is awarding contracts for the building of schools, Government buildings, offices, Garda stations, libraries, community centres and local authority homes, for example, that those contractors who tender successfully for it must be on the register and that it is a mandatory provision that they must be on the register?

It would be an interesting trail to follow to see how many builders that have already been awarded contracts, even just this year, are on that voluntary register. While we hope, in time, that there will be 5,000 names on the statutory register, the alarming thing about the voluntary register is that there are currently 800 names on it.

I just wonder about the 800 that, I guess, take themselves seriously, operate to good standards and are proud companies of integrity whose employees have had skills passed on to them and have had generations of building behind them. Then there are the other 4,200 that just could not have been bothered to register. In other words, they could not be bothered signing up to a scheme that requires of them certain standards. I presume that electricians and gas fitters are not included because they already have a gold standard registration system in place that people can absolutely trust. This is where we need to get to with the builders.

Deputy Nash raised a very important point. Many builders are employed by developers now. Certainly in Dublin it seems that gone are the days when the builder who built 20 houses sold them to finance the next 20 houses and then sold them to finance the next 20 houses. There is not a traditional builder in Dublin now who can build without the investment of developers. Are developers covered in any shape or form by the legislation?

There is a load more I want to say, but I will get to say it on various other Stages. I warmly welcome the Bill. It is another example of initiative and leadership by the Minister and the Government. I note from my brief this was meant to have been introduced by the previous Government by 2015. It is now 2022 and look how many units have been built in those seven years. It has to be the final say on the regulation of the building industry in this country. Nothing less will do.

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