New building regulations will cost householders

The Doing Business Report 2015 was published this week and the good news is Ireland’s ranking has improved by four places to 13th out of 189 countries.

However, Ireland’s ranking for dealing with construction permits in the report goes down from 117th to 128th – a drop of 11 places in one year. Could our new building regulation SI9 be responsible?

The UK is placed 17th, well over 100 places ahead of Ireland. Ireland’s ranking in last year’s World Bank ‘Doing Business’ report, dealing with construction permits was specifically mentioned last January as one key area for improvement by Minister Richard Bruton. These figures exclude most of the additional costs associated with building regulations introduced earlier this year and do not take into account new water connection costs. As building control is now privatised in Ireland the associated impact, on costs and delay incurred, has not been factored in. Will we slide further when it takes more than a day to get connected by Irish Water, and when the connection is no longer free? These statistics should be of concern to the Government.