Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

I will leave that to Senator Brady.

The fact that it has taken two years to extract a voluntary concession from the area of the country where this anti-competitive practice is going on is just outrageous. There is nothing functional about the current Irish housing market. It is dysfunctional, primarily because the pent-up demand that has been there for many years far outstrips supply. Consequently, there are too many people chasing too few houses. In that type of market, anti-competitive practices such as stage payments and gazumping — which I will talk about in a moment — are bound to occur. The job of the Minister of State with responsibility for housing and that of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government is to represent house buyers and stand up for them. They must introduce regulations or legislation for house buyers because it is a dysfunctional market. There is no way that the pent-up demand can actually meet supply. Hopefully, at some point it will and then there will be price equilibrium or even a reduction in price for some people who can then enter the housing market. The Government has been in dereliction of its duty, not just for the past two years. As I pointed out on 16 June 2004, it is inaccurate to say that the Law Reform Commission looked at this last year in a report and came to a conclusion as outlined in Senator Coghlan's Bill. That is inaccurate because the commission examined it the previous year. It also examined a whole range of other things.

When I first introduced my anti-gazumping Bill in the other House in 1998, one of the initiatives it led to was the establishment by the Government of a Law Reform Commission report into anti-competitive practices in the Irish housing market. One of the issues mentioned at the time was stage payments. It is to completely mislead the House to say the commission only came to a conclusion about this last year. It did not. Its views on this were stated as far back as 2003. The fact that it has taken three years to get a voluntary concession or extraction from some aspect of the building industry is crazy. I do not believe the Minister of State has been doing his job, to put it bluntly. He has been sitting back as happy as Larry, while the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform produces a conveyancing Bill into which he has had no input at all. He came down very heavily on my colleague, Senator Coghlan, in his speech where he said that he recently welcomed the conveyancing Bill on Second Stage, as he did, but the Minister of State is surprised that he has not produced any Committee Stage amendments as yet or made any reference to the fact that he will amend the law. With all due respect, that is the job of the Minister of State. He is paid to stand up for home owners and young people who are trying to get on the first step on the housing ladder. The idea that fundamentally all legislative proposals in this area must be left to the Opposition is just daft, quite frankly.

If this was coming onto the Minister of State's desk one month into office, that would be fine, and he should be given time. However, in effect it is three years since the first mention of this practice by the Law Reform Commission in 2003. The Minister of State has known about it for quite a while and suddenly, a week before this debate, a voluntary code is produced like a rabbit out of a hat. On voluntary codes, when I examined the issue of gazumping, I was told by the then Fianna Fáil-led Government that they would work. If we were serious about trying to outlaw the ugly practice of gazumping in the housing market, we should seek a voluntary code. Why is it that when it comes to any aspect of the construction industry, we do not want standard legislation outlawing practices, we refuse to include such practices in legislation or even regulate them, but we want voluntary codes? What is so different about the Irish construction industry that voluntary codes should apply to it, but to no other industry? I have never come across this obsession with voluntary codes anywhere else. Of course it only applies to those sections of the various construction groups who are members of the CIF. There is absolutely zero impact if one is not a member. Who is policing this? The people who are involved in the practice in the first place. As Senators O'Toole and Coghlan have said, the Irish auctioneers have already highlighted this particular problem. The notion that all of the interested parties are singing off the same hymn sheet on this issue is completely inaccurate.

I do not accept the argument about a voluntary code. Something is either right or wrong.