Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have been in the construction business all my life. Is the Government facilitating a one-stop shop cartel? Will the Minister of State clarify why the registered independent BER assessors are not permitted to provide the home energy assessment required to apply for a loan under the home energy upgrade loan scheme as the energy assessment can only be conducted by an SEAI-registered one-stop shop energy partner or community project co-ordinator? Is the Government saying an independent BER assessor who is subject to the same regulations and training as a one-stop-shop assessor cannot do an assessment on a house to apply for a loan? That to me is a cartel. That means the Government does not recognise independent BER assessors. That is a breach of competition law if that is the case.

Deputy Canney just said there is a hold-up with people to conduct assessments and with contractors to do work. That shows there is a people problem, yet the Government has closed the door on independent BER assessors. Does the Minister of State agree that BER assessors are more than qualified to provide the home energy assessments required under the home energy upgrade loan scheme; and that excluding those who are not on the SEAI technical assessment panel is anti-competitive and restricts choice for the homeowner? Again, it is about competition law. If there is only a one-stop shop dictating the rules to everyone, there will be very little competition. That means if I was the only building contractor available tomorrow morning, I could charge whatever I liked. That is wrong. How will we get retrofitting done if we have only one system to go through?

The same thing happened with pyrite. The Government only allowed certain engineers under its scheme to assess the houses. Now if you speak to anyone who has pyrite in his or her house, the cost to assess their house has gone through the roof. That is if they can get an assessor and they might have to wait months for someone to come and give them an appointment. The first thing the engineer will do is give people a price to assess their house and they can either take it or leave it because there might be no one else to assess the house. That is what the engineers are telling people. Again, the Government has tied this up. There are engineers in this country who are indemnified through insurance with building records going back years yet the Government says are not qualified to assess a building like that. We are talking about structural engineers, not textbook engineers, and they can get people out of a problem without looking at a book but by looking at the problem. Yet the Government is closing the door on them as well. How can we progress and make sure the retrofitting happens and that people's houses get fixed fast enough when all the Government does is to tie people up in bureaucratic paperwork and then it costs people an arm and a leg to get something done?

On the pyrite issue, the Government would not allow the foundations to be included in the scheme.

Any engineer would tell you that if foundations are out of date, the new structure is too big and will not work. However, the Government decided it knew best and went with one rule. If the Minister of State wants things to progress and for people to retrofit their houses, why can he not trust qualified people to do a BER assessment?

Electricians do spot checks on one or two houses to make sure they are doing the right readings. There could be a spot check to make sure that things are being done in accordance with BER rules. That is how we will get the most out of people and the most work done, rather than tying things up with paperwork and allowing inflation, something that is happening with BER assessors at the moment under the SEAI one-stop shop. I ask the Minister of State to examine this to make sure that people's houses can be retrofitted in a timely manner.

See this speech in context