A tip for the coming election: don’t believe any promises that are not accompanied by a revolution in accountability. For without it, very little will change.
Last week the Government launched a pilot scheme under which the Exchequer will pay for repairs to defective apartments constructed by private builders. Staggeringly, this is the majority of all the units constructed over almost a quarter of a century – a scandal of epic proportions.
The Working Group that reported in 2022 concluded that “of apartments and duplexes (or associated common areas) constructed between 1991 and 2013, the number that may be affected by one or more defects, ie fire safety, structural safety, or water ingress defects, is likely to range between 50 per cent and 80 per cent, which equates to between 62,500 and 100,000 apartments/duplexes.”
Some of this surely amounts to criminal recklessness. The most common form of defect in these units – affecting between 40 and 70 per cent of them – relates to fire safety. Up to 70,000 apartments were sold to unsuspecting buyers with faults that put their very lives at risk.
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Examples of these defects cited by the Working Group include deficient fire detection systems, fire alarms and emergency lighting, lack of proper fire protection doors and ventilation systems, inadequate escape routes, unprotected electrical cupboards, the absence of fire-stopping and cavity barriers and (chillingly in the light of the Grenfell Tower disaster in London) “inappropriate external cladding systems”.
What has happened to the builders who, through incompetence or deliberate cost-cutting to enhance their profits, created these fire traps? The Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien told us last week: “I have to say I’m pretty angry – a lot of the developments, we know who built them. The statute of limitations for many of them has ran (sic) out. In many instances, companies have folded and set back up again and are building again and that’s a great frustration.”
He said this as if he were an innocent abroad who has just stumbled on a dreadful scene. But in December 2020, when O’Brien was already in office, construction lawyer Dr Deirdre Ní Fhloinn told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage that “there is a long-standing practice of builder-developers setting up different limited companies for each development that they build. The money comes through the developer and the building company is just a shell. So even if the owner can sue the builder, the builder is unlikely to pay for the defects in the home.”
So O’Brien (whose party after all is twinned with the building industry) knows damn well that construction companies folding and setting back up again is no dark art. It’s standard practice.
This is a Western in which the cowboys with the hard hats don’t die. They get to ride again, and again – off into the sunset unburdened by any financial or legal consequences. And, for all we know, they are still doing the same shoddy work. Because the State’s response to this huge scandal is barely as scary as Father Ted’s, “Careful Now!”
The cowboy builders were subject to “self-certification” – which is to say they literally marked their own homework. In 2014, when the scale of the scandal began to come to light, this free-for-all regime was boosted to what is officially and with a comic twinkle called “reinforced self-certification”.
[ Minister for Housing ‘angry’ at rogue developers but has no plans to pursue themOpens in new window ]
An architect, surveyor or engineer must certify a building as meeting the required regulatory standards. But these professionals are employed by the builders themselves and, as Lorcan Sirr wrote in The Irish Times in September, none is “under an obligation to furnish any information about potential risks to the homebuyer or to the building control authority”.
Let that sink in: in a culture where most apartments were known to have been built with defects, some of them potentially fatal, the State created a regulation that specifically allows professionals who discover slapdash work to inform neither the local authority nor the person who is buying the home.
And this secrecy extends to the (very limited) inspections carried out by those local authorities. If food safety inspectors shut down a restaurant because they’ve found mouse droppings, the public is notified. If building inspectors discover that an apartment block has inadequate fire safety provisions, we are not told.
So when O’Brien tells us of the dangerous apartments that “we know who built them”, it’s not clear who “we” are. He knows, presumably. But not only have there been no prosecutions of these people, not only will the public pick up the tab to fix their shoddy work, but we don’t even name and shame. No prosecutions, no financial costs, no names and damn all shame. Just saddle up for another rodeo.
Is it at all surprising that in the same week the Government announced that, in effect, there will be no inquiry into how the State responded to the Covid pandemic? Sweden’s public inquiry produced its 1,700-page final report in February 2022. France has published the reports of at least three parliamentary inquiries.
The Netherlands established a parliamentary inquiry in February. Here is what it says about its powers and procedures: “Witnesses called by a committee of inquiry are obliged to appear before the committee. This holds true for ministers and state secretaries as well. Witnesses are questioned under oath. This means that they can be prosecuted for perjury if it turns out that they have not been telling the truth. Hearings are held in public ...”
And in magical, mystical Ireland? An “evaluation committee” with no powers to compel documents or witnesses. All strictly voluntary, even for public office holders and officials. Turn up if you feel like it – or send a doctor’s note to say that you find the whole thing too stressful. It sounds very like reinforced self-certification. The result will be that “mistakes were made” but not that “X made a mistake” – especially if X is or was a minister. A system that does not accept accountability for itself will never impose it on others.