Different Strokes For Different Volks

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longboat-1024x560

Longboat Quay apartment complex in Dublin

A purely hypothetical scenario. I own a German car and an apartment in Dublin. I discover that there are some problems with both. In the first case, the head of the car maker resigns in disgrace, millions are wiped from its share value, and it spends many millions more making reparations and recalling the faulty product, at its own expense. And all to fix a “fault” which turns out to be lines of code in the onboard computer that won’t make a damn bit of difference to the car.
The apartment, it turns out, was not built correctly. Somebody broke the regulations, and someone else never checked the work. I am told that I need to fork out thousands to fix a potentially dangerous problem that was not of my own making. And no-one else will have to pay; certainly not those that should be liable. So what’s wrong with this picture? I’m not sure, but if someone knocks on your door in the coming months, you might ask them.

Declan Kenny.
Leixlip,
Co Kildare.

Meanwhile…

kelly

On last night’s The Week In Politics on RTÉ One, Environment Minister Alan Kelly was on the panel, along with Independent TD Clare Daly and Sinn Féin TD Pádraig Mac Lochlainn.

Presenter Áine Lawlor raised the issue of Longboat Quay.

Áine Lawlor: “It’s a failure of regulation. The reforms this Government brought in after Priory Hall haven’t stopped this from happening again. What are you going to do now?”

Alan Kelly: “Firstly, it is a failure of regulation. I have huge sympathy for the people who have found themselves in this situation and it does need to be solved. There has been strength in regulation, absolutely has been strength in regulation. Obviously, this predates this. But together, the Dublin Docklands [Development] Authority, the receiver, the builder…”

Lawlor: “What are you going to do for the residents?”

Kelly: “Wait a sec, there is a package being worked on with the residents. And discussions will continue..”

Lawlor: “What will it be? Interest-free loans?”

Kelly: “Well, all that is being looked at. I’m not going to get into the specifics in relation to that. The Dublin docklands authority have their own board, their own structure. It wouldn’t be appropriate as minister to actually intercept that. But I am encouraging them to make sure that something will happen. But I do want to make one other thing in relation to this, which is very clear. This isn’t the only site that will have issues. There will be more coming down the road. I expect that. Because of the level of regulation that was there in the past and the standards that were maintained which were unacceptable…”

Lawlor: “The lack of independent inspection. Are you going to…I’ll bring in Clare Daly now. Are you going to bring in independent inspection.”

Kelly: “There are inspectors there already. We have ramped up the inspection process to ensure that, into the future, when construction is ongoing, that this can never happen again...”

Lawlor: “No more self certification?”

Kelly: “This, as regards buildings like this, of course, there is a programme in relation to regulation that’s there, in place. However I’m saying this straight out here, I do expect that there will be other locations that will come on stream which will have issues. And not every single situation is the same. So we’re going to have to look at how we’re going to intercept and help all the others.”

Later

Clare Daly: “I do think that the State has a responsibility because this has arisen precisely because of the lack of a clerk of works or public oversight and the minister says he’s brought in new regulations and they are new but they don’t get over that problem. All that the new regulation does is allow the person to identify somebody who potentially they could sue in the future. It does not avoid this happening. The only way in which we can stop this happening is by on-site inspection. It happens in the North, it happens in Britain, France, in Germany, it is not happening now.”

Watch back in full here

Longboat Quay (Irish Times letter page)

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66 thoughts on “Different Strokes For Different Volks

  1. Fergus the magic postman

    The comparison between the vehicle and the apartment is a good one.

    What do the following have in common:
    A handbrake on a canoe/ An ashtray on a motorbike/ Alan Kelly

  2. pissedasanewt

    The main difference being that the builder is now bankrupt, so who is liable to pay? Likewise if Volkswagon said “na, we won’t bother fixing this”.. their share price and reputation would be wiped out. So they have to do something.

    So the builder can’t pay. So really it should be insurance that pays. But clause 61.4-3 will get them out of paying for anything. Failing that, the building regulator or original fire inspector or the architect you employed to check the apartment before you bought it should pay.

    1. ethereal_myst

      Maybe the builder can pay something towards the costs from the profits he’s making off the construction contracts he’s now involved in

  3. Jonotti

    idiotic analogy that he hasn’t even followed properly.

    If he bought a dud car he can legally seek compensation but if the manufacturer is bust then it’s tough luck.

    1. Mr. T.

      But what you really mean is you support the likes of McNamara who screw people over and get away with it.

      I’d say you’ve quite a few friends who set up businesses, bleed them of cash, don’t pay their suppliers, go ‘bust’ on a Friday and then restart under a new name on Monday. Seems to be a subject they learn in private schools in Ireland.

      Everyone calls them ‘entrepreneurs’ but all they’re actually just scumbags thugs in suits.

    2. curmudgeon

      Eh its more like if VW went bust and then the top brass of now defunct VW opened a brand new company and built the same car again, and continued to make money. You don’t see how this is a problem?

      1. Jonotti

        No not really. Being a director of a dissolved company should not be a life sentence barring you from being in business. This is the basis of Western capitalism. Directors involved in criminality are a different matter.

        1. curmudgeon

          It being the basis of western capitalism isn’t going to swing me into your line of thinking. They sold defective and/or dangerous vehicles/homes they should not be allowed do the same again. If they wanna be a paye employee that’s just fine, but allowing them to manage a business with that track record is not.

  4. Jockey

    When he says “The apartment, it turns out, was not built correctly. Somebody broke the regulations, and someone else never checked the work”..

    IMO the owners shouldn’t have to pay for this.. But is this a true statement? I thought I saw somewhere that the regulations weren’t in place at the time. So at the point in time the apartments were built each box was ticked as appropriate, and since then, new boxes to tick have been implemented.

    Or are we saying that these regulations were in place at the time but were actively ignored?

    Genuinely curious.

    1. ahjayzis

      Fire regs were in place – a system of inspecting works wasn’t, so they skimped on the materials needed basically.

      At design stage all this would have been designed in, inspected by the fire officer and signed off – at design stage.

      It’s construction stage you can deviate wildly from the consented and cut corners.

    2. Anne

      There’s nothing wrong with the building regulations..

      The problem is that the builder didn’t adhere to them and the process for certification/inspections isn’t sufficient to ensure builders adhere to the building regs.

      There’s no new boxes to be ticked, or whatever you’re on about..

      1. Anne

        Sorry, that sounded a bit snarky..

        Even RTE are reporting “issues with the building regulations”.. There’s not.

        1. spider

          Didn’t see you question before I posted…

          To certify that a building meets the regulations architects have to first inspect & then sign sign a Certificate of Compliance on a finished building… but the wording of that documentation is so ambiguous that it means nothing from a legal sense… However, due to the power of the RIAI, the insurance companies and the local authorities demand that they have to be completed… The architects make a huge amount of money out of this (which is paid for by the end owner), yet they will not be held accountable…

          The architects have also engineered a situation where it is very difficult for any other party to provide a Certificate of Compliance… Jobs for the boys, money in their pockets etc… but no protection for the home owner. The RIAI should be held to account.

  5. ahjayzis

    Is it not really simple?

    Have the developers forgo some of their profit for a period of time, say ten, fifteen years, as a form of bond against defects arising.

    The developers themselves I’m sure could get insurance to cover this, and the insurance company can inspect to make sure it’s not going to take a hit on some scumbag saving a few quid on fire barriers and intumescent paint. Right now it’s the professions under the new regs who are taking the risk – but you can inspect something going in, sign it off and go home and they can take it out again. You always hear stories about people taking half the steel out of a slab as soon as the engineer’s left the site and pouring to hide it.

    Also, form a guild of builders or something, so that people who do this are never again allowed build in Ireland again. It’s GALLING that McNamara is still contributing to our built environment and raking it in in the process.

    1. Deluded

      Rebar relocation is traditional.
      A building I was on had the slabs x-rayed.
      … How thorough should my surveyor be?

  6. Paolo

    You are trying to draw an equivalence where one doesn’t exist.

    1. Volkswagon did not accidentally write a few lines of code. It designed and created software and hardware to get around standards.
    2. Volkswagon is still in business, the company that built Longboat Quay is not
    3. The organisation that signed off on Volkswagon’s emission tests is not paying out any money to anybody.

    Apart from that, well done.

  7. spider

    Architects have to sign a Certificate of Compliance on a finished building… but the wording of that documentation is so ambiguous that it means nothing from a legal sense… However, due to the power of the RIAI, the insurance companies and the local authorities demand that they have to be completed… The architects make a huge amount of money out of this (which is paid for by the end owner), yet they will not be held accountable…

    The architects have also engineered a situation where it is very difficult for any other party to provide a Certificate of Compliance… Jobs for the boys, money in their pockets etc… but no protection for the home owner. The RIAI should be held to account.

  8. Mr. T.

    These builders set up companies for each project they build. This contains liability to that particular project company only, as long as there are no personal guarantees given. It’s standard practice in Ireland.

    So they don’t care about the long term consequences of their dishonest practices.

    1. Jonotti

      Limited liability is standard practice the world over.

      People need to be better consumers. Stop stumping up huge amounts of loaned money to chancers like McNamara.

      1. spider

        Are you suggesting that people inspect their own homes before purchasing, or just refuse to buy based on the name of the developer (who may or may not be compliant)? Both options do not seem plausible…

        1. Jonotti

          Yes until the system changes. Don’t buy off plan and be very careful with your money. If it goes tits up then don’t expect the state to cover you.

          1. spider

            How do you expect people to inspect the building… post build, it would mean disassembling the building to find the materials inside, then rigorously testing them and checking all certificates etc… It would also require an extensive knowledge of the regulations etc…

          2. curmudgeon

            Difference in buying off plan (for me in 2006) was 40,000. If i had waited till it was built i would not have gotten any of the apartments i wanted nor the car parking space. And even then there was still 2 years worth of snag lists ear marked for the builder to fix after being nagged by residents committee and managment company. So was I supposed to wait a decade or so to see a change in regulations?

          3. Jonotti

            No you should have waited 5 years and bought your apartment for 60% less whilst also being able to thoroughly check it over before purchasing. You lose at life.

      2. ahjayzis

        Rubbish. Even if every one of the 100’s of buyers were to send their own professional to inspect, I highly doubt they’d be allowed on site. These people had a reasonable expectation that the building they were paying for did what it said on the tin – namely won’t turn into uncontrollable inferno in the event of fire, as per the regs it was supposedly built to.

        Your free market form of building control (build what you like, people will pay extra for fire and building reg compliance!) leads to tragedies like the Stardust – should those who died have been better consumers and demanded to see the Fire Cert at the door?

      3. ivan

        a pointless comment. ‘People need to be better consumers’ makes no sense. When Longboat Quay was built, even if you got the finest engineer in Ireland to give your prospective apartment the once-over, he probably didn’t have x-ray eyes so as to see what had/hadn’t been put in the walls etc, so that he could advise the potential purchaser ‘stay away’.

        In 2007, whether you bought off the plans, or bought when there was that nice ‘just built’ smell about the place, no matter how careful you were, unless you stood on site, during the build, in your hardhat and hi-viz monitoring what was going on, you got what you got. And as I say, rightly or wrongly, what you got mightn’t have been up to much.

        As to the present day…the new regulations should make things better. Architects and builders will all have to have some kind of professional indemnity insurance so that if a problem arises, there’s a fund that should pay out. Given that every architect/builder will have to pay an annual premium, they’ll be a lot less likely to put their names shoddy workmanship, and seeing as it’s an offence to occupy a building that HASN’T had the work signed off on, developers will be far less likely to cut corners.

        My point – in any event – is that whilst it’s an easy line to trot out, ‘buyer beware’ isn’t a fair assessment, if the buyer can’t check the insides. If you’re buying a car, you’d be allowed have a mechanic take a peek under the bonnet before you hand over any of your hard earned…

        1. Jonotti

          People buying blindly off plans enabled these cowboy antics. A decent building surveyor could tell that these places were thrown together as quickly as possible.

          Too many people were willing to throw half a million at some property without a second thought. They should live with the consequences. The more cautious buyer should not be made pay for their private dealings.

          1. ivan

            My point is – and you haven’t deal with it – that no matter how responsible a buyer *was* they had no mechanism at their disposal to investigate the quality of workmanship. They relied on the word of somebody, somebody who’d been to college and had letters after their name’n’all, like, somebody who was related to* the building of the project, but also somebody who had a professional reputation and probably wrote on an RIAI approved cert and who said “yup this is fine”. You say that “A decent building surveyor could tell that these places were thrown together as quickly as possible”, but could they? Did they? I honest to God don’t remember there being much doom-mongering about shoddy building back pre-crash (though that could well have been that newspapers with bulging property supplements were never going to kill that fattened calf, I’ll grant you…)

            I get where you’re coming from, but if you’re to line up the dramatis personae in this sorry episode against the wall, are you *seriously* telling me that the purchasers are the most culpable in this? A simple yes/no there will suffice. And if you’re not, then who *is* most culpable?

            (*yes, I know :) )

          2. Jonotti

            They needed an independent expert not connected to the build. Sure they might not have been able to detect apartment level issues but that is the risk associated with buying a leasehold apartment.
            I remember a lot of discussion only back then about shoddy apartment builds. Most people had bubble mindsets though at the time.

            The builders are to blame and they are the ones that can be sued. If you can’t sue them then tough.

          3. Anne

            @ Jonoffi,
            “People buying blindly off plans enabled these cowboy antics. ”

            Fire certification is granted at design stage.
            At least go away and do some reading before you start trolling with nonsense would you.

          4. Anne

            “Sure they might not have been able to detect apartment level issues but that is the risk associated with buying a leasehold apartment.”

            Christ above, but you’re one airhead.

            What would a decent building surveyor do differently when surveying a house, as opposed to an apartment that would make him more likely to find defects with the build of a house as opposed to “apartment level”?

            I won’t hold my breath for an answer from Jonoffi.

          5. jonotti

            They will have full access to the house but unlikely to get access to whole apartment building.

        2. Continuity Jay-Z

          “When Longboat Quay was built, even if you got the finest engineer in Ireland to give your prospective apartment the once-over, he probably didn’t have x-ray eyes so as to see what had/hadn’t been put in the walls etc, so that he could advise the potential purchaser ‘stay away’.”

          So how was it ever discovered then? Your post is nonsensical. Any surveyor could have examined that building(same with Priory Hall) and told a potential buyer that there would be problems.

          People foolishly bought off the plans like panicked lemmings not to make a home but to make a killing.

          1. Anne

            “So how was it ever discovered then?”
            A prospective buyer’s surveyor who drilled into walls I would think.. A lot of surveyors wouldn’t have been as thorough.
            It’s standard when purchasing a home, if getting a mortgage, that the bank would send their surveyor to the property. People generally also get their own structural survey done. The defects were missed on numerous surveys, you can be guaranteed of that.

            “People foolishly bought off the plans like panicked lemmings not to make a home but to make a killing.”

            Fire certification would have been given based on plans.

          2. Anne

            Sorry, it looks like it was discovered last year.. Here –

            http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/columnists/michael-clifford/longboat-quay-gremlins-went-to-work-on-apartment-block-357515.html

            “A detailed inspection by a senior fire officer in Dublin Fire Brigade in May 2014 unearthed a dozen serious concerns for fire safety…..

            Was it consulted about the recommendation to serve a fire safety notice last year and did it have any input into the decision not to do so?

            Having got burned in Priory Hall, was the council determined that no repeat should occur, whatever the safety concerns may be? “

      4. Nigel

        Caveat emptor are words to live by, but they haven’t been the bottom line in consumer protection for a while now.

  9. Clo

    Not a great analogy.
    But if you want to ask anyone any questions about Longboat Quay you could start with this guy, chief project architect at McNamara: http://www.mciarch.com/aboutrmc.htm. Or maybe this one, head of finance (whose team presumably squeezed costings in this kind of context) https://ie.linkedin.com/in/ronnieneville. Definitely ask any FF types who appear on your doorstep about it too: http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/the-man-whose-business-success-was-built-on-the-wings-of-political-failure-26416375.html

  10. Junkface

    The State is liable for not enforcing building regulations on the country which they govern. Other countries have things called Laws and Procedures which must be followed if builders and developers intend to build homes to sell. What happened at Longboat Quay, and all of the rest to follow is Corruption and profiteering plain and simple

    1. Ernie Ball

      Yes, and I’ll bet when you’re not ranting about that, you’re ranting about the “bloated public sector” filled with “parasites” who are “bleeding us dry.”

  11. ollie

    I pay a levy on my car insurance to pay for uninsured drivers. I pay a levy on all my other insurances to pay for the debts of the likes of Quinn Insurance. I pay a large chunk of income tax to pay for the debts of Irish Banks.
    I paid a levy towards Metro North when I bought my house (by the way the planning permission for metro nth runs out this year, in which case all levies have to be repaid. That’s the real reason for the recent announcement)
    So, Alan Kelly (who’s really only a mouth on legs), could reduce vat on new builds and divert the money into a compensation fund for substandard developments, both current and future.
    No amount of regulation will stop Irish builders from taking shortcuts in the pursuit of profit, and no amount of regulation will compensate owners for the cost in making essential repairs. Construction Businesses will come and go and people will be left unprotected. Spare me this crap about PI insurance remaining in place after a business is delisted. The property owner will still have to go to court for compensation. In the case of Longboat Quay the cost for repairs in a 2 bed is €9,000. Too low to risk a court case.

    The fact that a company can be established and wound up simply to allow the owner to avoid his legal responsibilities has to stop. Everything in this country is managed by not taking responsibility and not making any particular individual responsible.
    For example,
    Bernard McNamara has 15 current directorships and 193 previous directorships. Set up, build, take profit, wind up, repeat as required.
    Paudie Coffey is the Junior Minister responsible for housing. Where’s he vanished to?

    For fire prevention in a building the responsibility lies with the architect, the M&E engineer (who the architect’s not responsible for ), the structural engineer, the plumber, the electrician, etc. etc.

    Everyone culpable, no one responsible. The Irish way.

    1. pedeyw

      There will probably be an inquiry costing millions and in three years we’ll find out that no one specific is responsible and that mistakes were made.

    2. curmudgeon

      Yes and yes, liability is only with the company never the individuals – and its always the same individulals isn’t it. Also on suing a company – this country has no class action suit mechanism, the courts don’t see fit to allow it.

  12. phil

    I recommend a 15-20% Developer Levy on their future projects, If this seems unfair, let all the developers get together and brain storm for a alternative to the levy, but it should be made clear that all remedial work on current stock should be complete by 2020…

  13. Paolo

    Accountability falls to the person or persons who were in control of the building company at the time of the build. You cannot delegate responsibility and responsibility should follow those individuals, not the limited liability instruments that they routinely set up and dissolve.

    This is not a matter of money, it is a matter of criminal negligence. McNamara should be brought to account and put on trial for negligence.

    1. Anne

      Oh my god, I think this is the first comment out of Pablo, where he’s not trolling.
      Well said Paolo

  14. Disasta

    Janotti,

    How are people to know the content of the concrete, the quality of the rebar etc etc etc of a build?
    Employ someone for months to watch each part of the build and test materials and methods along the way?

    Or wait until the place is build occupied by someone else because they waited and ask the current occupier if they can take same samples and drill holes to see how things were done?

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