Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

To continue the point I was going to make, on the one hand the Minister is saying this Bill is not the appropriate place to do it. On the other he is saying it should be a change to building control, but he has yet to decide whether he is going to initiate that review. If he were to initiate it, they typically take at least a year and that would only then start to work into the next cycle of development plans and future applications for planning permissions, meaning it will be quite some time before we see a tangible change.

I am in the South Dublin County Council area and the architects' department and the housing department operate to a very high standard of accessibility and liveability beyond what Part M requires, but the number of units is far smaller than the level of need that exists. It is not uncommon, for example, for people to be waiting nine years on a medical priority transfer for a wheelchair-accessible unit in our local authority area, and the authority has a good track record. There are also very significant numbers of people left living in the private rental sector in very inappropriate conditions because of the lack of appropriate building control regulations.

I am not convinced the Minister is going to review Part M. I really would welcome it and urge him to make that decision as soon as he can. This committee would be more than supportive of such a move. He is not going to support this amendment so I am not going to try to convince him, but he is going to have to find some way to strengthen the provisions within the development plan provisions and within the housing plan provisions. I may come back to that by way of a Report Stage amendment because some strengthening of that would be of enormous benefit, especially for those groups of people who very often are the most marginalised from our housing systems and housing stock.