Eoin O'Brien

I want to hear from organizations like Threshold.

And we need to ensure that we do give families the flexibility that they need for their own direct family members.

But we do not create a situation where the already illegal racking and stacking of poor quality modular accommodation, or as we saw in the journal.ie yesterday, 22 people living in an old Georgian building in Clare Street.

We do not have a return to very, very poor quality, high cost accommodation because the government made a mess of this.

Well, clearly, if you're either providing freestanding residential extensions for yourself or your family members, you're going to maintain adequate standards.

Once you extend that into the private rental sector, for that section of people who are willing to pay fast and loose with the rules, and we know those people exist, it creates an incentive, particularly when you throw the rental room tax relief into it.

for poor quality dwellings.

And Seamus is right, we shouldn't scaremonger, but Seamus is welcome to come to my constituency and I will show him a significant number of poor quality modular units in which people are living paying huge rent and they have no other choice.

Again, as I said yesterday, we saw- And that's legal at the moment, is it?

It is illegal, right?

But it is happening.

So if you then create an incentive for people to do that on a greater scale without adequate checks and balances, it creates real problems.

I'm also not yet convinced that there will be a certification.

What I'm reading in the newspapers

is the homeowners will be responsible to ensure compliance with building control.

That's already the law.

But there is an exemption from certification for building control, crucial things like fire safety, for single residential units.

Now, when we see the regulations, we'll know for sure.

But all I'm hearing in the news reports is an obligation to be compliant without any certification.

And because it's exempt to development regulations, there are no checks and balances by the local authority.