Longboat quay- Another priory hall

This won't be a popular opinion, but what's becoming visible now with this and similar cases is the result of the Irish attitude towards ANY bill from local authorities, regardless of if it's for bins, rates, water charges or similar, the "low cost/no cost" mentality is what's got us where we are, if people won't pay for the services that they expect to be in place, then the local authorities have to find other ways to balance their ever decreasing budgets. ( And no, I don't work for a local authority, and never have)

I moved to Ireland from a UK town of similar size to Ashbourne, which is where I'm living now, and the town in the UK had it's own local town council, with planning controls and the like, the legislation is very similar between the UK and Ireland. The difference is that in the UK, for a town of just over 10,000 population, the planning and building control department had a staff of 10, and half of them were the building control section, who spent their a lot of their time going out onto EVERY site that was being developed carrying out inspections of the stages of construction, and if the inspection wasn't signed off by building control, they could (and did) require that all work subsequent to the missed inspection was removed to facilitate the inspection, regardless of the cost or other implication, so you didn't miss ANY inspections. We built a house (restoration and upgrade) so I had first hand knowledge of how the system worked, and what the implications were if you didn't comply.

Then, we moved to Ireland, and signed up for a build here in Ashbourne. Don't believe that things were better before the celtic cowboy years, those celtic cowboys were trained by someone, they were the builders that were active in the 90's, I know, we had them here on our estate, and I very soon discovered that there was no point expecting the architect (who had received a significant fee etc) to do any sort of inspections, and I very rapidly discovered that there was also NO building control inspections from the local authority, they didn't have ANY staff in that area at all, so compliance was none existent, then and now, self certification is a joke, and a 6 year statute of limitation on a property that should have a life of 100 plus years is also bizarre.

So, what we have in Ireland is the worst of all worlds. The client has a culture of paying for nothing, and the builder knows that no one is going to be taking any notice of what they actually do, rather than what they are supposed to do, and anyway, between the regular liquidisation of building companies, the statute of limitation, and the lack of teeth in Homebond, it won't matter anyway, as by the time all the cheats, shortcuts and deliberate fiddles come to light, there will be nobody to take the blame or pay the bills that are the outcome.

We got a reasonable house at the end of our build (1990), but that was only because for a 6 month period, I drove out to Ashbourne from Dublin every evening, and did my own inspections, and if it wasn't right, I made sure that they dealt with it before they could move on or hide the evidence. I didn't catch everything, because I couldn't always be here, but we had the only central heating system out of 20 houses that still works, and our electrics didn't keep tripping out every few days like some of the other houses that went up at the same time, and there were other issues that we didn't have because the builder knew I was watching them like a hawk.

Regulation without regular stage inspections and enforcement is pointless, and doesn't work, and that's becoming more and more apparent, and the only way it will change is if there is an inspection regime that is not controlled by the developer or the client, and is beyond any reproach or bribeability, and that inspection regime has to have the absolute power to shut down ANY site, regardless of the size or the cost implications, if the inspection requirements are not 100% complied with. If that was in place, then maybe we wouldn't be having these sorts of discussions about the standard or otherwise of construction work.

I'm not advocating that the local authorities here should be the control organisation either, given that there is no way to remove non performing civil servants, for inspection regimes to work, the people that are operating them have to be competent, and have to be removable from their position if it becomes apparent that they are not doing their job properly, and we've seen so many examples of mind numbing maladministration from local authorities here, I'm not at all happy with the idea of making them judge and jury of the building standards system. their track record over the last 15 or so years is far from good.

A house, or apartment, is NOT the same sort of thing as a car, or a TV, for all sorts of reasons. The anticipated and expected life span is massively longer (or should be), and that fact alone requires that the standards applied to the construction have to be orders of magnitude higher than those applied to the sale of "consumables".

We as a nation have to start making serious decisions about how we want to structure the country. We can continue with the attitude that no one pays for "services", or we can accept that services like building standards, public infrastructure, water, and waste disposal, and roads, and lighting in public places all have to be paid for, and everyone has to pay something towards them.

That opens up a whole new area of contention and discussion, like how fit for purpose state services actually are, and the value for money that we get from those services, but I'm not going there, as it's highly controversial and a long way off topic.

A surveyor can only do so much when inspecting a property that's been finished, as too much that is of critical importance is hidden from view, and can't be seen without doing massive damage. That's why we have to have a better and more intrusive and invasive inspection regime during construction, and in many respects, our legislators have failed all of us by their reliance on "soft touch" regulation. Ideally, the legislators should pay for their mistakes, but that won't happen any time soon, and given the size and scale of the issues that are going to be ongoing for a long time to come, I can't help thinking that some form of significant levy on ALL developers going forward is going to be the only way to sort out these massive issues that have the potential to blight the lives of so many people.

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Each apartment payed a massive levy upon construction to the council, everyone now pays property taxes, the people payed good money for a poorly constructed property, there was plenty of money around from the sale of these apartments and others to sufficienctly fund inspections.

In theory yes, but in practice, there is still NO inspection regime in place within the local authorities, they don't have the staff to carry out inspections, and don't see it as their job to carry out such inspections, which is another issue altogether.

As for where they spend the money they get, I made a comment that there are serious questions to ask about how fit for purpose our state services are, but I don't want to distract this thread from the core issue

KlausFlouride wrote: »

There's inevitably going to be some issues just due to complexity of house building. Would catastrophic problems like in Longboat/Priory Hall be discovered by a thorough inspection by an experienced architect/engineer/builder during a build?

As long as the inspector had access to the approved plans, so fully aware of what was supposed to be in place, and inspections were carried out regularly, they yes, very easily