Dail committee to call Roche on house claims

The Oireachtas environment committee will call Environment Minister Dick Roche to respond to claims that the owners of 250,000 new houses face losing a significant portion of the value of their homes because they have inferior insulation.

Mr Roche will be asked to appear before the committee after a leading maker of timber houses accused the Government of protecting the concrete industry by failing to implement new regulations that would prevent home-builders from using hollow bricks.

The claims were made by Century Homes chief executive Gerry McCaughey, who sold the company to Kingspan last month for €98 million last month.

Mr McCaughey said a new "energy rating" system promoted by the EU would show that 250,000 homes built with hollow brick in Dublin, Meath and Kildare were some 35 per cent less energy efficient than homes built with solid brick.

This would discount the value of such homes vis-à-vis more efficient homes when a EU directive on the energy performance of building comes into force.

The directive, which is due to come into force next January, will require house-sellers to provide a certificate to the purchasers outlining the annual cost of heating the house.

However, Mr Roche's official spokesman said the Government was seeking a derogation that will delay implementation until 2009.

In a statement, Mr Roche said "misleading and untruthful" allegations were being made in the media and said he was "not prepared to favour any particular sector" in his dealings with the construction sector.

Mr McCaughey claimed at the environment committee yesterday that the Government had resisted moves to restrict the use of hollow bricks to protect the concrete industry.

As evidence, he cited a May 1998 note to then Minister of State for the Environment Bobby Molloy which was marked "confidential" but which was released to him under the Freedom of Information Act.

Department principal officer Michael McCarthy said in the note that the regulations on energy conservation would have to be revised sooner than expected because of the Kyoto protocol on carbon emissions.

However, he said in the note that "we don't want to signal this to the outside world just yet because the next "leap" in building standard insulation will probably involve making it difficult for hollow block construction used widely in the Dublin area to survive". Mr McCaughey claimed the real reason Mr Roche didn't want to introduce home energy rating certificates was because that would have legal ramifications for the construction industry.

Mr Roche questioned Mr McCaughey's motivation and said Ireland's insulation standards for new dwellings were now among the highest in the EU.