The government should set up a redress scheme to compensate homeowners forced to pay for shoddy building work, an Oireachtas report said.
Residents subjected to defective building work including developments such as Priory Hall, Longboat Boat Quay and Beacon South Quarter in Dublin could benefit from the proposal.
The report, Safe As Houses?, which makes 26 recommendations, has been supported by cross-party TDs.
A report by the committee on housing, planning and local government that examined building standards and consumer protection had said that homeowners should not be liable for the costs of putting right work “caused by the incompetence, negligence or deliberate noncompliance of others”. It claimed that the limited scope for compensation for victims, particularly in developments built before 2014, was a “recipe for disaster”.
The redress scheme would include an information and advice service for homeowners and residents and would review fire safety standards of developments that were built during the economic boom.
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Eoin Ó Broin, the Sinn Féin spokesman on housing and author of the report, said that the government “needed to recognise and accept responsibility for the failures in the past”.
“For most people, the purchase of a home or the signing of a council tenancy is one of the biggest commitments they will make in a lifetime,” he said. “We need to ask if the building control system in place is robust enough and if consumers are sufficiently protected.”
Mr Ó Broin said that the full extent of the problem of badly built houses and apartments during the boom was not yet known. “Other developments, in which defects were discovered, often by accident, were quietly resolved between the parties involved. In some instances this resolution took huge effort by residents and met with stiff resistance from those responsible.”
The report proposed that the government set up an independent Building Standards and Consumer Protection Agency, similar to the Food Safety Authority or the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency would work with local authorities to help to ensure buildings comply with safety and standards regulations.
The agency should also be the location for the Construction Industry Register Ireland, the report said. The proposal for a statutory register of professionals is being considered by the Dáil.