Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin and Deputy Ó Broin in particular because I understand he was the special rapporteur when the housing report was produced in 2017. I will start on a positive note because it is difficult to remain positive with what we are facing with regard to the cost, negligence and failure of successive Governments. I welcome the Government's commitment to having interim reports, bringing a memo in advance of the recess next week and providing retrospective redress. I welcome all of that.

I heard a Labour Party colleague talk about our not wanting a political squabble. It is extremely important not to reduce this debate to a squabble and instead to look at how this happened. I welcome the people in the Gallery and throughout Ireland who are listening and waiting to see. We need urgent 100% retrospective redress.

We need it as quickly as possible. Let us put this in perspective and not in the context of a political squabble. Successive Governments have tolerated poor regulation, a failure to monitor and a failure to resource local authorities and they have given a thumbs-up to developers. I worry that we are doing exactly the same thing all over again and that we have learned nothing. I will quote from a presentation by a solicitor on that report, which was in 2017. It is now five years after that report and a year and a bit after the working report was published. I thank both groups for their work. The solicitor said, "Irish law is stacked against home owners who discover defects." She continued to say, "Irish law is unclear in a number of important respects with regard to remedies for building defects." She is a specialist construction lawyer who made her time available to the committee. At this meeting in 2017, she pointed out, "These problems are not new. The Law Reform Commission described them in 1977 and again in 1982 in a report that included the defective premises Bill." She later elaborated and pointed out that the Bill was never passed. She referred to the Law Reform Commission report of 1982, stating:

It was made in response to the suggestion made at the time that increased protection for consumers would increase the cost of houses. The Commission stated, "Economies achieved at the expense of defective building work were not in the interests of purchasers or lessees of houses."

That report was in 1982. We are now looking at a report from a working group. After its year of work, it has told us that there is no single cause of defects but that they arise due to a variety of reasons. My father worked all his life and ended up as a small builder. He was an absolute perfectionist. It makes me ill to read this part of the report, which states, "They tend to arise due to a variety of design, product, inspection, supervision and workmanship issues, occurring either in isolation or in various combinations." We find out from both reports that there has been an utter failure to inspect and regulate.

I will go back to what a Deputy from the Social Democrats said and ask what we have learned and where we are now. Can any Minister or Minister of State tell us what the Government has learned about inspection? What is the rate of inspection in each local authority? How many people are needed to ensure that this never happens again? I have heard nothing and we will spend up to €2 billion, rightly, to pay the property owners and people who have been affected in up to 100,000 apartments and duplexes, for a period from 1991 to 2013. It is now 2022. The Government is clapping itself on the back about a memo being brought to Government before Christmas. Look at that period. I have no idea if things have improved. From what I have read, they have not. I am extremely worried. I will repeat that we are once again giving the thumbs-up to developers.

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