I propose to take Questions Nos. 367 and 420 together.
The National Building Control and Market Surveillance Office (NSCMSO) is a shared services hosted by Dublin City Council. It provides oversight, support and direction for the development, standardisation and implementation of building control as an effective shared service in the 31 Building Control Authorities, through the five pillars of training, inspections; compliance support; Information System - Building Control Management System (IS-BCMS); and market surveillance.
In 2020, I appointed Dublin City Council as a competent authority, under the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Consequential Provisions) Act 2020 (Construction Products – Market Surveillance) Regulations 2020, for the carrying out of market surveillance functions under the European Union (Construction Products) Regulations 2013 for all related construction products on a nationwide basis.
My Department funded the establishment and initial operation of the national market surveillance unit with the NBCMSO/ Dublin City Council in 2020 and 2021 and has not received any requests for additional staffing from the NBCMSO since that period. From 2022, the funding of the office transitioned to local authorities in line with the shared services model.
Under section 159 of the Local Government Act 2001, each Chief Executive is responsible for the staffing and organisational arrangements necessary for carrying out the functions of the local authority for which he / she is responsible. As such further information on staffing and recruitment would be available from Dublin City Council.
My Department fully supports the work of the NBCMSO and considers it a key element of the Government’s ongoing building control reform agenda. In addition, work is underway to establish a building standards regulator to strengthen the oversight role of the State with the aim of further reducing the risk of building failures and enhancing public confidence in construction-related activity. The objective is to ensure that this regulator has sufficient breadth of scope, effective powers of inspection and enforcement, and an appropriate suite of sanctions.
