Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chairman. I do not necessarily have a problem with the Bill but I am somewhat at a loss to know what miraculous inspiration will be carried out by the Construction Industry Federation, CIF, by being registered with it, that will save everyone from perhaps buying bad blocks or timber, or whatever. I just cannot understand that part. The second part I am trying to fathom, which the Minister of State may be able to address later when he gets the chance, is whether there is a fee. There are probably battles going on at the moment with the State, be it on price or quality of work done, where companies would have been members of the CIF. That membership did not solve the problem which caused the battle that went on afterwards. What part of the jigsaw is the CIF going to miraculously cover that will save the industry from bad workmanship, or whatever? One can become a member of the CIF, and I know that there are certain rates for workers and no one has a problem with that, but if one starts doing work for the council, a person does not have to be a member of the CIF at all. That is unusual. If one starts doing work for the council on the side of the road this does not seem to arise.

We want to ensure that houses are built properly. There is one very simple way of doing this through product liability. If there had been product liability from the companies involved for the poor people in Mayo, Donegal, Sligo, Clare and all of these other places, the taxpayers in this country would not be forking out to the tune they are having to. That is the reality of it. It is scandalous that the company that supplied the gear to most of those places is able to get away scot-free where the taxpayers of Ireland are paying for it. That should not be acceptable. I will leave that issue there as I do not have a problem with it.

If one wants to build houses, one needs to have a quarry to get a bit of sand, concrete and all the different things one needs. At the moment, as the Minister of State is well aware - and I know he may be working on some aspects of this - with the substitute consent we have the great people who have decided to bring Ireland or everyone to court to try to block every piece of quarry in Ireland. Everyone is shouting for houses at the moment and they think that they are going to go up in the air without concrete, sand, blocks, and everything else required. One and one does not make two in that regard. It does not add up. People need to get a little bit real in this country as we are walking into a situation where a certain number of quarries will control this country if we do not cop on. A substitute consent was brought in and the people who availed of this early to comply with the law are still caught in a quagmire. Those who waited until about the 100th application moved on because it had become simplified after that. The first people were caught in a logjam. If the Minister of State does not solve that, companies like Roadstone and all of these big conglomerates will be smiling. We have created a system at the moment where a small quarry operator, be it in Mayo, Leitrim, in Louth or wherever, may have one, two or three lorries which will be covering a small area; I guarantee the House that if one is not a member of certain groups in this country, these operators will have either an environmentalist or someone else objecting to them. That is unacceptable.

We are hammering out money now on roads. I suggest that the Minister of State looks at how asphalt prices have gone in recent years. How many people can do that work or are allowed to do it? How many objections are made to anyone who is trying to build an asphalt plant in Ireland at the moment? There are about five or six places which tried to put up asphalt plants that might have provided some competition. Funnily enough there is one company that is able to object to them all. It would be interesting to see what it does for a living and where there may be an odd environmentalist with it.

We are codding ourselves as politicians in the price we pay per buck if we are blocking this through legislation. There is a complete cartel at the moment where councils have to try to tender to get the roads done and what is going on is scandalous. It would be interesting for the Minister of State or for anyone to take a look at what is going on in respect of objections the minute a person tries to establish an asphalt or a tar plant, or to do anything around this country, because it is blocked. There are not too many at this kind of work, or who have been able to go to do this work.

We are haemorrhaging money in this regard. Yes, we need the best of regulation, which no one denies. We have certain State bodies where An Bord Pleanála has to give planning permission, which is fine, because one has to go through all of the procedures. Why, however, would one have to wait for two or three years for certain licences even though one has got one’s planning permission, where there are other licences behind that permission? Why are some people held up longer than others? The whole system is rotten to the core. If we do not sort out the quarry and the materials side of it, we will not build houses. Everyone is turning a blind eye to what I am talking about and civil servants do not have a clue how to solve it. We have more legislation and more paperwork. We have brought ourselves into a quagmire and as a country we have left ourselves in a position where we are almost trying to stop work going ahead.

I ask the Minister of State to look at what I have talked about this evening because if we keep going on this road, we will only have a few suppliers left in the country and the Government will pay through the nose for it. One can give €40 million to a county for roads, and one could have a look at what the roads programme did last year per kilometre compared to what it had done three or four years ago or eight years ago. That will soon show where money is going, buck per mile. What I have seen is rotten. I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

See this speech in context