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…

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)