Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this sometimes emotive subject. Hundreds of thousands of families have been put into a situation where they bought a house or an apartment in good faith, took out a mortgage on it and are still paying that mortgage for a home that is now defective. There is widespread anger about what has happened to innocent people who were trying to pay their way in life to make sure they had a home for their family. They were not relying on the State to provide it for them. They were not asking the State for anything other than good governance and a proper regime to ensure that any construction done in this country could stand up and be looked at with pride.

As someone who worked in the construction industry for a long number of years, it gives me no great pride to have to come in here and talk about defects in buildings and houses. This has come about because decisions were made in times past to dispense with very good practices, which we had. I will give an example. When I was building local authority housing, the National Building Agency oversaw the construction. The clerk would randomly visit sites with his box and would take samples of electric cables, timber, door locks or copper pipes. He would take a sample of each component that goes into making a house, bring them away and get them tested.

The place they were tested at the time was the Institute for Industrial Research and Standards, which did all the testing. If any faults showed up, that particular component of the house would have to be stripped out and the same would happen in every other house under construction. We also had a regime for testing concrete blocks and cubes of concrete. They were tested in the university in Galway at the time. There was a seven-day test which would give an indication and there was a 28-day test which could be stood over. That seems to have been lost in transition. We may have got too self-confident that we were well able to do things without any controls. All of those good practices were dismissed as trivial and unnecessary in the construction industry. We moved towards self-regulation and self-certification. When we turned that corner, we found that we were moving into fog. Self-certification and the regulations attached were there but who was enforcing them? Who was refereeing the match? Who was blowing the whistle when something went wrong? That is how we found ourselves in the position we are in now whereby a taxpayers' bill of €5 billion to carry out rectifications is probable. Joe Public is still going to pay for this, no matter how we look at this issue. Introducing a levy on the manufacture of concrete does little other than create an increase in the cost of material for which Joe and Mary Public will pay. We are not learning at all in what we are doing here. We are talking about bringing in more regulations. We are talking about more certification that can be done by architects and engineers. We are talking about improving regulations. We are over-regulated but any enforcement is totally absent. Our local authorities, the building control agents for the State, are totally underfunded to do that particular job. They do not have the numbers or funding to do it, nor have they the wherewithal because it is just an ad-on within a planning department. It is not dealt with in a serious way.

A building control officer might call out to a site at random and look at something. He or she would say to the certifier for the client that there is something wrong and work should stop. How many such visits are paid per annum to how many sites in the country? I asked the Department how many building control officers we have in this country and was told that is a matter for local authorities. We are not learning anything from all of this.

In my time, there were three aspects to building control. There was sampling and testing of materials. There was sampling and testing of products to ensure they had CE certification and stood up to the standards required. Visual inspections were also carried out to ensure that where the materials were acceptable, they were being installed properly so that we had what we are entitled to have, that is, proper buildings that are fit for purpose and with no risk of defects.

During the Celtic tiger era, we also got a crazy idea that every house in the country needed to have a structural guarantee. The people paying for that were the couples and individuals who were building the houses. Those were the people who wanted to do something for themselves and not be a burden on the State. The banks and the Central Bank demanded it. Local authorities are still demanding it for local authority mortgages. A bond at the moment would cost €600, €700 or €800. What is it worth? What is it worth to any of these people who have taken out and paid for a structural guarantee, an insurance bond, and are getting nothing in return? Where are the companies that underwrite this risk? They have disappeared away from the scene but still have the gall to offer structural guarantees on houses now. Even worse, our banks and local authorities will not give out mortgages without structural guarantees in place. It is futile. Those guarantees are a waste of money because they are not worth the paper they are written on. That is a fact. Until we wake up and realise that unless we put proper enforcement in place, we are still going to put ourselves and the taxpayers at risk of being required to fund another defects crisis down the line. Writing out regulations, memos, instructions and directives for local authorities is not worth the paper they are written on if we do not stand up, man up and say we will never let this happen again. The way to ensure it does not happen again is by investing in building control and not in remediation. I concur with everyone who has said that for the people who have been visited by these enormous problems, we, as a State, must ensure that everything is done to provide 100% redress because we owe justice to them, their families and ourselves.

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