Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute again on this particular problem that has developed over a good few years. There are people in the Gallery who are on the front line and affected by the problems and the defects that have arisen. It will cost the State an awful lot of money to put this right but that is what it has to do. We have to make sure that everybody is taken care of and that the people who have defective houses and apartments are put right. I get emails, as I am sure does everyone else, from people who own apartments that have been found to be defective. They are looking at bills of €80,000 or €90,000 to put them right. They cannot afford this and it is not right. We need to bite the bullet on this.

I would like to concentrate on the regulations in place. I come from a construction background and I believe we have plenty of regulations. We have plenty of people who can write a certificate. We have plenty of people who get well paid for all of that. What we do not have is proper building control. We all speak about building controls as if they are happening but they are not. Local authorities are not resourced to carry out building controls in the way they should. The construction of houses and apartments has become complicated, with far more services going into the buildings. There is a greater chance that people will miss out on sealing all of barriers required for fireproofing and certification. This needs significant and independent building control. If we are serious about not repeating these mistakes, we need to make sure we fund our local authorities properly so they can carry out inspections. There should not be just one or two building officers in each local authority. That is tokenism and will not work. There needs to be enforcement. It needs to be seen to be there and felt to be there so that people will not even contemplate taking a shortcut in construction.

Another issue that continues to gall me is structural guarantee insurance bonds. Banks require people who are buying houses and apartments to have this in place. There are structural guarantee schemes whereby people pay €500 or €600 for an insurance policy that is not worth the paper it is written on. However, the banking system and the local authority home loans system continue to insist on having these structural guarantee schemes in place. The householder has to pay €600 or €700 for the joy of getting a piece of paper that is flushed down the toilet the minute something happens or goes wrong. There is no one there to carry out work on the structural defects. It is terrible that this continues to be how we deal with matters.

We have another issue that has never been discussed much here, although I have raised it on several occasions. A large number of private housing schemes in this country are serviced by wastewater treatment plants built by the contractors and developers. The same wastewater treatment plants are in limbo because Irish Water is refusing to take them in charge. Local authorities are also refusing to have anything to do with them. The residents are left with the maintenance and all that goes wrong with this type of equipment. They have to fix it. Earlier his evening I spoke to residents who are having a meeting tonight about their estate and what they will do. They are faced with a problem whereby money needs to be spent on sewage treatment and they do not have it. They pay the local property tax and all the other taxes they should pay. They paid stamp duty when they bought the properties, yet Irish Water, the local authorities and the Government are refusing to recognise that there is an environmental time bomb in this regard. The people living on these estates do not have the resources to manage these treatment plants. Once and for all we have to grasp this nettle to make sure everybody in the country is given a fair hand and a fair house to live in.

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