Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North-Central, Fianna Fail)

I am someone who is about to embark on a journey with my family to build our first home.

If there was a genuine modular offering for us as a family, we would look at it but, unfortunately, it is just not there for us as one-off house builders. I am lucky to be in that position. Still, there are significant barriers there. I was at a lunch today with the Estonian ambassador and she spoke to me about a conference she attended, which I believe a number of colleagues attended as well as part of a trade mission in the past few years, where there had been issues with certification. They are able to build these houses to scale in central and eastern Europe. Obviously, a house being built in Estonia will be different from one being built in Ireland. I assume climate plays a role in that. The Estonians speak about our inability to get over the bureaucracy and how we are strangled by certification. It is necessary but this is three years after she first flagged it as an issue. That is something that frustrates me. Between the Custom House and Department of public expenditure we get bogged down in bureaucracy and administration. Hopefully some day we can break free from it and get on with delivering these units.

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