Paudie Coffey (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and his officials to the House. I am pleased to have an opportunity to debate the important issue of fire safety in buildings. As the Minister has said, the first priority with any building must be the safety of the people who reside in or inhabit that building, the second priority must be the building and the material itself, and the third priority must be the belongings in that building. I remind my Fianna Fáil colleague and the other Members of the House that most of the legacy issues that relate to building problems result from poor compliance during the Celtic tiger years of 2000 to 2009. We would ask who was in charge during those years, and the answer is that it was Fianna Fáil. We were left with legacy issues of thousands of unfinished estates, non-compliant buildings and apartment blocks, and fire safety traps like Priory Hall, that was mentioned. When I served as Minister of State, I was involved in the establishment of much of the Government's building control and compliance reform programme, which lasted from 2014 to 2016. The building control and management system and various other systems were put in place to ensure compliance and better standards with regard to new buildings. We are aware of high-profile cases like Priory Hall. I suspect that there are many more legacy cases in which deficient standards can be found in buildings constructed during the Celtic tiger years.

The Minister mentioned the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy of June 2017, in which many lives were lost. It is only when a tragedy or a crisis like that occurs that there is a real public focus on these issues. The Members of this House know that we have an ongoing responsibility to ensure building control and management is an ongoing process that involves constantly evaluating how successful the building control standards are and where changes need to be made. We know we cannot afford such a tragedy to occur in this country. One life lost is one life too many. The local authorities are responsible for the enforcement of building control standards and for compliance with fire safety regulations. It is critical that the local authorities are adequately resourced in this respect. We need to keep the new building control management systems that are now being operated by our local authorities under constant review. We must ensure our fire inspection and building control departments are adequately resourced.

As I have said, we were left with many legacy issues after the boom years. In recent years, a great deal of progress has been made in dealing with such issues. The Irish Timesrecently reported on a statement from a property management company, Keenan Property Management, which manages a portfolio of more than 20,000 apartments throughout the country. I was concerned to learn that when the company carried out a survey of its stock, it found that there were fire safety issues of various standards in over 70% of its properties. Such issues included inadequate fire alarms, outdated fire alarm systems and deficient fire stopping. The survey also revealed a lack of proper compartmentation which allows for the escape of fire and smoke within those buildings, a lack of fire detection technology in car parks under apartment buildings and issues with compliance with planning conditions relating to fire safety. Each of these issues is a matter of deep concern. If they are prevalent among Keenan Property Management's property portfolio, they must be prevalent in other portfolios as well. It is important that the entire apartment stock in this country is surveyed to ensure it is compliant from a fire safety perspective and that any issues which arise are remediated.

The Minister mentioned that designers, builders, professionals, including the engineers who sign off on buildings, and owners are liable and are responsible for ensuring buildings are compliant.As we all know, fire certification is required before buildings can be inhabited. Owners are liable and responsible for ensuring that their buildings are compliant. The State's involvement is in ensuring compliance with standards, which is important.

In my former role as Minister of State, I was involved in the review of the mica issue in Donegal and Mayo. There is a difference between fire safety issues in apartment blocks that were built and signed off on by professionals and issues like the mica situation, where people might not have been aware at the time of construction that deficient material was present. The problem developed in subsequent years and caused people considerable stress. That is why the Government responded by assisting with the pyrite and mica issue, and rightly so. People had been left in the lurch with buildings literally falling down around them. Where safety compliance is not upheld, the liability should rest with the builders, owners and professionals who signed off on the work. I presume they have insurance that covers them when they are negligent in any way. It is not fair to expect the State and the taxpayer to be held liable for every incidence of poor workmanship and legacy issues like those I have outlined.

It is important that standards be upheld and that surveys be evaluated continuously. Where people can show that they do not have the financial wherewithal to survey an apartment block for which they are responsible, perhaps we should consider initiatives like a low-interest loan scheme to assist them. I am not saying that this should or can be done. There should be strict criteria around such a scheme, but where there are genuine fire safety issues and finance is a problem for the owners, management company or whoever is responsible for the building in question, it would be a good idea to consider having a funding scheme to which owners could apply upon meeting strict criteria so as to address those issues. This is probably something that we should consider and I ask the Minister to do so.

I will say no more and will look forward to the further contributions.