Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will have a go at it. I thank the Minister and Minister of State for bringing forward the legislation, which is overdue because we have seen many issues in the construction industry, some of which have been the result of poor certification and workmanship with no real or effective engagement in how we take care of things when buildings are constructed, whether they are houses, public buildings or whatever. We have seen over the years issues with pyrite and now mica. There are also legacy issues relating to fire certification in apartment blocks and all that goes with it. I heard the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, speaking earlier about consumer protection. The costs to this State of the sins of the past in trying to protect consumers is and will be enormous if we rectify the legacy issues.

Having been a practitioner and then a lecturer in the construction area, I have insight into how the construction industry does and does not work. I have some comments in that respect. We must look back to see what we did in the past.

One of the biggest things we did in the past was never to give proper thought to the regulations we brought in. Paperwork seemed to be the best part of it, but the effectiveness of what we actually introduced, in terms of regulations or certifications, wilted very much and was very disappointing.

I often remember back to the times when people were building houses and the biggest thing they had to do was make sure their houses were registered with HomeBond. It was a panacea in that, if they registered with HomeBond, they were protected for a structural guarantee on their house. They paid money for that. In every housing estate you passed, you would see the HomeBond signs on the billboard that said the houses were protected, and it was also up in every window in every house. There was a sense HomeBond was going to protect people. When the real problems arose, however, HomeBond was not at all effective. The sad part about it was the banks demanded HomeBond before they would give a mortgage. You had to be registered with HomeBond before you could draw down any kind of grants that were going for the houses at the time. It was devised as something that could protect people but it did not. It failed dismally.

Funnily enough, I still come across requests all the time from mortgage holders for these same safe structural guarantees. They are at a cost of €500 or €600 to the person who is building the house or who is buying the house. Even with the Rebuilding Ireland home loan scheme the local authorities have been looking for this HomeBond to be put in place for a self-build house. I wonder what this is all about and why it is still going on. If it is not effective, why are we still using it and demanding it? Why is the State still demanding we take out this cover and spend money on something that is actually useless? It is important to state this. We cannot do more of that.

Another thing that galls me at times, which was alluded to earlier, is Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, and the number of houses we are going to retrofit to increase standard in those houses. I put it to the Minister of State there are houses where such work was carried out and it has not improved them one iota. The people carrying out that work had been employed by the SEAI to do that work. The SEAI, in its wisdom, then decided it would have an approved list of contractors to carry out the work in houses. This created elitism. A lot of small builders and contractors, including plumbers and electricians, would not touch the SEAI with a 40 ft pole because it was all about paperwork. It was not about the effectiveness of getting the work done.

I am aware of cases where people had applied for the SEAI grant, for example, to install an air to water pump in their house. They got through to the SEAI-approved contractor and got a price. They found, however, they could do it for a lot less with their own contractor who was just as competent, but because he was not SEAI approved, he could not do the work. It also worked out that the amount of grant available was less than the amount of saving the person was going to make by using his own contractor. The quality of the work done was just as good, the output was probably better, and it was done by a local contractor who could be called on any time if there was an issue with the heat system.

I believe these kinds of things create a kind of suspicion that we would bring in more regulations, that more signatures would be required and that we would require more people to certify works. Where is the accountability, however? The building control units in our local authorities are totally under resourced and are totally ineffective, yet we call them building control units. We must call this out for what it is, which is farcical. The HomeBond system has been there for years and we have been paying lip service to it without actually offering any proper solution to the problem.

This is why I mention the word "effective". If the construction industry is to be effective in regulating its business, we must have regulations and laws that are effective, enforceable and that will get people to pay the penalty when they do something wrong. My fear for all such legislation is we will have a plethora of paperwork, people will not understand what it is all about, and we will find we are flying off, as it were, with more people employed in the paperwork industry, as I call it, without actually having effective control around how we build.

Other countries do it completely differently. In the United States of America, for example, if a contractor is bringing a water supply or gas supply into a building, it opens the trench, leaves in the supply, and leaves it open with a red flag on it. The building control officer is then notified, who calls out within so many days. If it is done right, the building control officer puts a green flag on it. If it is done wrong, the red flag remains on it. That is called effectiveness whereby people do not progress with things or cover them up and say, "Ah sure it'll be all right on the day."

We have created a cost in the building of houses with the certifications we are doing at the moment. The farcical aspect is the block layer, the plasterer and the electrician all must give certifications to the architect or engineer, who will then give a certificate based on that certification, and who will then give a certificate to a builder, and the builder will certify down along the line. This has created a cost of some €10,000 onto any house, and I am not so sure this adds any value to what we are doing at the moment.

I put it to the Minister of State that we have a serious problem with regard to the building programme we have laid out in the national development plan and the building programme we are undertaking for housing in the State currently, given the way it is being cranked up. The AECOM report today indicates we are nearly back up to the boom level of output in construction at the moment. We are flying away with it but who is minding the house? Who is minding the work? Who is actually responsible? We do not have anybody. We have, in the past, relied on no certification. Then we relied on self-certification. If, for example, professional people are working for me and I ask them to certify something, it can create a conflict of interest. In no other business would there be that same conflict. We must come back from the brink and put in a building control regulation, controlled centrally and paid for by the industry.

It must be controlled and employed by central government. I would go so far as to say that, given the construction levels at the moment and the amount of capital spending we do, we need to take a leaf out of the UK's book, whereby they brought a construction adviser into the Government. This adviser has the experience and international experience, so that projects get done, are done within budget, and quality is monitored in how that is done. We spend a huge amount of money on capital works. We spend an enormous amount of money, and rightly so because we need the infrastructure we are putting in, but we are spending nothing - absolutely zilch - in how we control it and how we regulate it.

While I welcome the Bill, I am concerned we will have more of the same. I am sorry to say that. I believe there is an opportunity, following on from all of the distractions with mica, pyrite and the ongoing fire issues in a lot of buildings, not just to change things but to change the whole thing completely so that we take charge of it and so the public would have the confidence that things are being done right. I have no doubt our local authorities could be our building control units, but not if it is one person with a name over a door and that is it. The number of inspections carried out at the moment in any local authority is few and far between.

That is not because they do not want to do it, but because people are not there to do it.

How many local authorities employ architects and engineers in their building control units? Galway County Council does not have one architect or engineer on its books, and a lot of other local authorities are the same. If we have building control units, we have to ask why we do not have professionally qualified architects, engineers, quantity surveyors, service engineers and fire officers directly employed within those units. If we do not do that, and give them the power to monitor and inspect what is going on and issue instructions which have to be carried out to the letter of the law, then we are going nowhere.

How our materials are regulated and certified is part of the issue with pyrite and mica. In my day there were what were called agrément certificates for materials. How are materials controlled and inspected? Who goes out to quarries around the country to inspect the materials that are going into our concrete? What organisation is responsible for that? We need to think about that. The problems with pyrite and mica are a result of defective materials going into concrete and filling in the ground. Today, we still do not know who inspects these materials before they go into a mix in a concrete manufacturing unit.

There are samples of tests on blocks and concrete for strength and whatever else, but who carries out independent tests to determine whether blocks are fit for purpose and clean enough to use? We still do not have such an inspection regime, yet we spend billions trying to rectify the mistakes that have happened because we did not carry out inspections in the past. We have a huge mountain to climb, but if we do things properly and do not tip around the edges we will get things right. We need to have zero tolerance. We need to educate our apprentices and graduates from college about what quality really means. It means something that leaves a legacy, rather than a disaster, after them.

A lot of the work done in this country is done right, but the problem is that when work is done wrong things go horribly wrong and cost this country a huge amount of money. Any legislation that is introduced needs to have the teeth and strength to cut out the watering down of what is happening on the ground. We need people going into sites who have teeth and are able to stop work in the same manner as the Health and Safety Authority does. It can place prohibition notices on site, and the same should happen if a site is not doing things properly. Who is going to do that right now? Will this legislation do that?

We have a huge amount of work to do to make sure that the buildings we build and invest in are built to last. We should know after five or ten years that we have got things right. It will take time. This is not something that can be changed by one piece of legislation. The Minister of State is making a start by introducing this Bill, but it is only setting the agenda for what needs to be done.

I will consider tabling amendments to the Bill, but I believe wholeheartedly that we need to put a huge amount of effort into making sure that whatever we deliver in terms of legislation is effective, is preventative in terms of bad work and will penalise people who try to take shortcuts. We cannot have that. There are too many good people working in the construction industry who put their lives into construction, which is a tough business, and have a work ethic. They need to be supported by making sure that legislation is in place to back them up, and ensuring that those who are trying to cut corners or certify things incorrectly are taken out of the game. Nobody needs them.

We have plenty of certified bodies which are training members in all kinds of continuous professional development. We need the backup of legislation to make sure that whatever they are doing, they know they have the support of the Government and the law and what happened in the past will not happen in the future. I will say it again. The materials we used in our construction were the basis for the problems we had in terms of mica and pyrite. Problems will arise again if people do not inspect and interrogate certifications.

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