John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I welcome also the members of the pyrite action group. My colleague, Senator Denis Landy summed up the disgraceful handling of this issue. Senator Landy has dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's. We know who is responsible and we know where we need to end up to resolve this issue.

I have not spoken on this issue in the House, but I have the greatest sympathy for the people who are affected by it. I know that people did not know what they were buying into at an early stage. People were depending on construction professionals to guide them so that they would not make mistakes but they were led astray. This is a scandal. It was symptomatic of what was permissible by the administration that drove housing developments, leading to the boom and subsequent bust. When I categorise administration, I also categorise planning authorities as well.

From my layman's reading of it, there seems to have been three different phases in building development. When I built my house in 1994 I had to employ an engineer in order to get a mortgage. The engineer had to come out approximately six times during the building of my house and sign off at every single stage. She had to witness every stage as the work was done. If anything went wrong subsequent to getting the mortgage, I had the right to sue her. I am assuming that right exists for everybody else. Thankfully I did not have to resort to that.

Some years later, during the boom we were building houses that we did not need. There was no doubt that there seemed to have been very much light touch regulation. I was very critical of planners during that time. I had experienced great difficulty over a six month period in reaching agreement with a planner on the orientation of the house. We spent six months arguing until we agreed on a place in the middle. During the boom if a builder wanted to build 40 houses in an area, the planners were more or less encouraging him to build 80 in the same area. They were blinded by development levies as this was the only sector the local authorities were interested in at that time. Today, we are in the third phase of building development. The planners are sitting in offices with nothing to do. They have one file on their desk and they might have it between six and 12 months. They might find any number of problems. Let me give an example, a constituent of mine applied for planning permission and the planner came out and met the applicant and the engineer. There were eight areas of contention that the planner had identified. The applicant rang me and told me that he could solve the eight identified problems. All the problems were addressed by the engineer. When we spoke I told him not be to surprised if the planner would identify additional problems. Sure enough, it did happen. When he had addressed the eight problems, the planner wrote asking how he would supply water to his house, to which he responded, saying he would drill a well. The planner responded seeking a sample of the water. He replied that he would send in a sample of the water as soon as he has the planning permission as it would cost ¤6,000 to drill for water. We thought that was a logical response.

His planning application was refused on grounds that were never discussed or raised with him as a problem, the zoning. We are now back to this nonsense because the planners have nothing to do. They took their eye off the ball during the building boom. It is ironic that pyrite is known as "fools' gold". I hope the fools who introduced it and those who were complicit in it being used pay dearly for all the problems they have caused.